Company Girl
by Fencer22
Summary: A mercenary company with a track record for killing dangerous capes and fighting wars are about to acquire a bug controlling teen, and a few others. Their enemies are so very fucked. Rated M for violence, cursing, and probably some implied sex at some point. I do not own Worm, or the Chronicles of the Black Company.
1. 1-1

AN: Disclaimer I'm to lazy/forgetful to do this every time so saying it now and it is in the description. I do not own Worm, or the Black Company. I am making no money by writing this.

Company Girl 1.1

scene start just as Taylor attempts to bolt from the hospital post Leviathan.

I made to bolt down the hall and out of the building only to be stopped by a hand on my shoulder. I tried to lash out only for my arm to be caught by a woman in her late thirties wearing a black military uniform with pieces in grey and dark red. Oh her left collar she wore a silver wrench insignia on her right a single silver bar. The same silver bar was also prominently displayed on her helmet. She wore no mask. Over her left breast was an emblem recognized the world over; a silver skull breathing curling blood red flames on an ebony background surrounded by a circle of silver, the emblem of the black company.

I don't remember too much about military rank but I do remember that bars indicate an officer. The wrench is most likely an indication of her specialty or her job. A wrench would suggest either a mechanic or an engineer I assumed. So I was currently face to face with a female officer and engineer of the infamous black company. Only one name matched that description.

"Lady." The name slipped between my lips in a whisper. Unless I'm mistaken the woman before me is one of the only Tinkers to stand on the same level as Hero and Dragon. The woman quirks a single delicate eyebrow before nodding in confirmation, her face betrays nothing of what she might be thinking.

"Why are you stopping me?"

"Do you know that often when history books are written it is the little details which are over looked?" The change of subject catches me off guard. "It's understandable really, there are so many of us and so many important events to be remembered, but often those little details that so few of us remember are critical to actual understanding. They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but they are fools. They say that as if learning what started wars in the past will allow us to avoid them in the future. The company has a different saying; 'those who learn from history are victorious'."

That's… dark. Yet it makes a certain sort of sense to me. I want to argue that peace is possible, that it is worth fighting for, but for some reason the words won't come. I think back to Emma who turned on me. Armsmaster a supposed hero ready to use me and toss me aside when I started to make him look bad, trying to kill me with an Endbringer. Sophia being called a hero in spite of what she had done to me.

"You cannot prevent war but you can learn from history how to fight so that when it comes you come out on top. Often the little details that history books leave out are the most important to study. For example everyone knows that in world war two a joint strike against the Germans at Normandy was a major victory for the Allies, but how did they win the battle? What tricks did they employ? How many losses did they take versus casualties inflicted? These details are important and can be learned, but they are not taught. The importance of history and those little details is something I learned from Croaker."

The saying made sense. They had been bringing fights to my door all along. If heroes acted like this then it only made sense that the world on a larger scale would be the same. So if conflict is inevitable then it only makes sense to learn from the conflict of the past and apply those lessons.

"The reason I stopped you, is because I can tell there is more to your story than just those broad strokes laid out by Armsmater and your teammate. You running off now will help nothing. Stand your ground, explain yourself in full. I will keep them from going overboard. Once the air has been cleared I have a proposition for you and your team. Several of my colleges are making similar pitches to others but right now, this needs to be sorted so that your history does not come back to bite you."

I take a deep breath before nodding and turning back to face those I just ran from.

"Legend, Grue… Please, let me tell you the full story."

Legend glanced up from where he was restraining Armsmaster and seemed to stiffen when he noticed Lady standing at my side.

"Lady, I assume the company is here for your usual post Endbringer routine?" Legend asked rather stiffly.

"Among other reasons." Lady replied rather airily. "One Eye finally got his revenge, once things calm down we will turn over the body and evidence to you. We would have been here sooner but we could not afford to miss our window of opportunity, I'm sure you understand." The two heroes and Armsmaster stiffened.

"You got her?" Whispered Legend. "You actually got the Siberian? How?"

"The Captain got drunk one night and took a fresh look at the problem, she was a projection. It took us the better part of two months to figure out who the projector was but once we did we moved to eliminate him. Time stamps on the videos will show that Siberians disappearance coincides perfectly with the sniper round that killed the man."

"She's dead, she's really dead." Legend slumps against the counter of the nurses' station.

"You knew she was a projection for two months and didn't tell the Protectorate!" Battery hissed.

Lady gave the hero a dismissive glance. "Of course not, the last time we shared intelligence with your organization you barged into a sting operation and got twenty of our men killed by Butcher, who then escaped and was killed by a telaporter forcing us to redesign our plans for her capture and elimination. Your organization and the PRT cost us lives and time, time in which the Butcher racked up an additional fifty kills. That's seventy lives wasted because your people couldn't stomach the thought of having to pay the Company for doing your jobs for you, yet again."

Battery looked liked she had been slapped when Lady finished her rebuke. Legend finally seemed to pull himself together as he looked up once more.

"You want to recruit her don't you." The way he said it made it more statement than question.

Lady wanted to recruit me for the Black Company? That was huge, but I couldn't afford to let that distract me right now.

"Legend, please, I need to explain myself, both to you and to my team. They deserve to know the truth and you need to understand why I can't join the Wards, or give Shadow Stalker my identity." My voice was pleading but I couldn't be bothered to care, I was pleading and I knew it.

"I'll listen, but only if Tattletale confirms your statements with her power." Grue said the distortion of his voice caused by the use of his power giving away the fact that he was barely restraining his anger."

Legend nodded thoughtfully. "Come with me, all of you. Battery please detain Armsmaster at the PRT HQ until further notice."

With a nod Battery lead away Armsmaster. Legend meanwhile directed our group down a hall into an unoccupied room closing the blinds he turned to Lady.

"Do you have anything to prevent eavesdropping?"

With a nod she pulled a device from her belt and affixed it to the door before stepping back.

"Alright Skitter you wanted to talk, so talk."

I took a deep breath before I reached up and unzipped my mask revealing my face. "My name is Taylor Hebert. To fully explain what happened to me would compromise my secret identity anyway so I might as well open with that." If legend is surprised that I would unmask to him immediately after refusing to have share my identity with a Ward he doesn't show it.

"I'm telling you this because… I'm tired. I don't trust you, not in the slightest but since the beginning I've been trying to hide things from people and it's only lead me into more trouble, recently someone told me that those who learn from history are victorious. Since hiding the truth hasn't worked yet I'm going to lay everything on the table. Then you can either prove to me that the heroes can't be trusted or that some of you actually live up to your title. If you betray the trust I'm giving you I will use what I learned today to burn your reputation to the ground. And you guys" I say as I turn to face my team. "I don't know what you all will think, but I'll just have to go from there."

So I tell them, about the bullying, about the locker, about my hopes to be a hero and to prove to myself that I'm better than the bullies by going out to be a hero and how I was mistaken for a villain, Armsmaster's proposal to take credit for the take down of Lung, him blaming me for the interaction between the various bug venoms and his anti brute drug. The bank, the fundraiser, how Armsmaster and I had spoken again there and he had shot down my offer. How I was starting to view the Undersiders as friends, family even, and how I decided I couldn't just turn them over to the heroes.

Everyone stayed quite while I talked.

I glanced at what used to be my team before sighing. "Then things all went wrong, technically I left the team, early today, maybe an hour before the attack. We had a difference of opinion on how to deal with something that came up… I found out who the Undersiders backer is and what kind of person he is. The rest of the teams reactions were too in line with what I would expect from real villains as opposed to what we've been doing."

I shook my head. "Out of respect for them I'll hold my tongue, for now. I may or may not share that information depending on how this plays out." I gave my ex-teammates a sympathetic glance. "I'm sorry I won't give them anything on any of you, but this is just too wrong for me to let be." I turn back to Legend. "You wanted me to either join the Wards or reveal my cape identity to Shadow Stalker, I can't do either of those."

I walk up to Legend and lean forward and whisper in his ear "Shadow Stalker is Sophia Hess, she shoved me in that locker, and I won't have anything to do with an organization which employs vicious psychopaths.

Legend stiffens. "You realize I can't just take your word on this matter. There would need to be an investigation…" he trails off probably because of the look on my face.

"So nothing happens, again." My voice is like ice, my eyes tear into Legend like daggers. "Winslow was destroyed in the attack; I saw it from the air. No evidence to be found there, how hard would it be for my hospital records to get lost in the chaos of an Endbringer attack, then it's my word against hers, I know how that plays out."

"Please," Legend pleads, "that isn't what I meant, that's not what I want to see happen."

"And yet you aren't denying that it would play out that way."

"… I'd like to believe that the organization is better than that."

"But you don't." Lisa cuts in. "Otherwise you would just come out and say so."

Legend says nothing.

"I believe this is my cue to intervene." Lady speaks up. "Legend, once more your organization has failed to live up to your carefully crafted image. Taylor, The Company wants you. I can't promise we'll solve all your problems but I can promise that the company is family, and we look out for our own. We deal with the threats the Protectorate and the PRT don't have the balls or the brains to go after, and we get paid good money to do so. I want you to take your time to consider the offer and keep in mind there is only one way out of the Company, feet first." Lady stared me down utterly serious.

Hesitantly I nodded. Lady handed me a card before turning to address the rest of the Undersiders. "The offer extends to all of you, naturally. Bitch you would be unable to maintain shelters given how much we move around, but if you can train dogs to work with our men in the field we can fund you that and set up an organization to find homes for the dogs who don't meet your standards for combat. Grue, we know you're in the game for the money though we don't know why. Depending on your reasons we might be able to help. Tattletale our offer for you is much simpler. You will get paid and you won't be on the front line like you are now. Safety, that's my sales pitch to you. Regent, or should I say Hijack? Congratulations on getting away from your father. You know he's been on our list for quite some time now? With a bit of help from you we could put him down once and for all, then you could stop looking over your shoulder, not to mention the Company can easily find uses for your real power in some of our dirtier operations."

Lady handed out a card to each of the Undersiders. "You all have my contact information. The Company will be in town for a few weeks, knocking over gang warehouses for a bit of pocket money while we wait for the bounty on the Siberian to come in. You should all think carefully on our offer. Legend, it's been a _pleasure_ as always." The last sentence all but dripped sarcasm.

Her piece said Lady collected her device and slipped out of the room into the hallway leaving all of us in silent contemplation.


	2. 1-2

Company Girl 1.2

Legend departed shortly after Lady leaving our small group in silent contemplation. My thoughts spun round and round in circles of what if, and why. The Black Company is a mercenary group, renowned for killing more major threats than even the Guild. The problem was they still took contracts in addition to their bounty hunting. In some cases that was considered universally beneficial, but usually it was much less clear cut.

From what little I knew most of their extended mercenary contracts took them to small countries in Africa or the Middle East where they would fight either for an established period of time or until they stopped getting paid. Often those wars were fought between rival war lords, where neither side could truly be classified as 'good'. Still something about Lady nagged at me until I finally gave up on puzzling it out myself.

"Tattletale, Lady went by a code name, but she didn't wear a mask. Why is that?"

Lisa sucked in tired breath. "It's not just her. Everyone in the company is like that even the non-capes. It's a statement. The Black Company is made up of people who left their old lives behind. No family and no friends outside of the Company. When everyone you care about is part of a group that the Protectorate and most governments try not to piss off you don't really need to worry about hiding your identity to keep them safe, and everyone from their past life they leave behind, either dead, an enemy, or just left behind. They change their names to escape the past, and they show their faces because there isn't anyone for their enemies to go after for leverage." Lisa said. Her tone was strange. It spoke of a certain amount of respect, but also fear and sadness. Through it all there was a faraway look in her eyes, one that spoke of plots in the making and liberal use of her power. No doubt her headache would be record breaking after all the use it had seen today.

The words took some time to sink in. What Lisa was describing was such a foreign concept, but it held a strange sort of appeal. The idea of leaving the past behind me and starting fresh as part of a group where I could be myself, be Taylor and Skitter at the same time and not give a damn about what anyone thought of that… It was enticing.

Brian cleared his throat, bringing me back to the here and now. "This is a lot to take in. We have a good thing going here but with the city in the shape it's in… we may not be able to keep it going. Hell they might just decide to write the city off for all we know." Brian gave me a sidelong glance. I wished I could tell what he was thinking behind his motorcycle helmet. "We've all had a long day, and we've learned a lot that we need time to process. Skitter and I have family to check on, Bitch has Dogs to look after." That reminder that she still had Dogs in her care that would need to be checked on seemed to shock Rachel out of her funk, if only slightly. "Lisa you need to report to the boss let him know were all alive, beyond that he doesn't need to know anything, not yet. Alec, go check on the base and make sure it's still there, if it isn't talk to the boss, I'm sure he'll be able to set something up. We'll decide where we go from here in a few days when everything has had a chance to settle down."

His piece said Brian left, Bitch following right behind him. With a shrug and a glance over his shoulder Alec followed them out of the room. Lisa came up and squeezed my shoulder giving me a sympathetic smile before reaching for her cell phone and heading out the door.

{}{}{}{}

I stared at the front door with trepidation. I had sworn to myself today in the hospital that I was done hiding the truth, that I was sick and tired of it coming back to bite me in the ass. Well this was the only thing left standing between me and my promise. Still I knew my Dad, he wouldn't take this well. Swallowing a lump in my throat I walked up the steps and opened the door.

"Dad, I'm home."

"Taylor!" Dad bolted out of the kitchen and into the hallway sweeping me up into a hug. "Taylor, I was so worried, are you alright?" Dad voice was almost panicked as he leaned back to look me over checking for any injuries.

"I'm ok Dad, really, but we need to talk." I say while fidgeting nervously both at the prospect of the conversation to come and at Dad's inspection.

I gently guide Dad back to the kitchen before putting on a pot of water for tea. Dad sits at the table looking concerned and confused. When the water boils I pour a bit into our old tea pot and swirl it around heating the pot. I'm not really sure if it makes much of a difference in the quality of the tea. Mom always said it was the correct way to go about making a pot of tea though, and who am I to argue with tradition? Dumping out the water I used to heat the tea pot, I fill it to the brim with hot water and add the tea bags while I set out a pair of coffee mugs for Dad and I.

Finally after taking my first sip of the strong black tea. I hunch forward in my chair and stare contemplatively at the table. There is no good way to go about this, of that I am sure, but I'm not doing myself any favors putting this off either. With a final sigh I begin to speak.

"Dad, what do you know about how capes get their powers?"

My father seems startled by the unexpected question but he recovers quickly enough. "Not very much, why?"

I take another deep breath. "They event which causes a cape to get their powers is called a trigger event, it's generally agreed to be the worst day of that person's life. It can be all sorts of things; a physical attack, accumulated mental stress, betrayal, whatever but the point is they are always traumatic…. Dad, I triggered in the locker."

Silence hangs in the air like a lead weight bearing down on top of me.

"You're a cape?" There is something in Dad's voice, not fear or anger or sadness. The closest emotion to what I'm hearing from him would be dread.

I nod mutely still unable to make myself look him in the eye I raise up a hand and through the open window fly a dozen moths of various sizes I have the insects fly around my head in a circle giving the impression of a living grey halo. Heh, and isn't that a fitting metaphor for everything that's happened. My intentions were always good, but between the actions I took while trying to achieve my goals and how I had ended up losing sight of my original goal in exchange for the relationship I had developed with the Undersiders… I truly was something in between good and evil, not an Angel or a devil, but something in between, a grayscale to the black and white that so many professed to be the only truth.

With a thought I dispersed the moths and directed them back out the way they had come in. "I control bugs, people call me Skitter." I murmur.

"You're a villain?" Dad sounds incredulous, his voice thick with emotion and pain. I can feel my eyes starting to cloud with tears. I nod mutely not trusting my voice. I simply stare blankly into my tea waiting for Dad to say something anything, just so long as it will end the silence.

"Why?" Dad finally asks. "You always wanted to be a hero growing up, why would go and become a villain Taylor? Taylor, how could you?" Dad's voice grew louder with every word until he was yelling. I shook like a leaf. I had asked myself that sort of question countless times recently, but to hear the same things coming from Dad was… crushing.

"It's a long story Dad." I say, my voice resonating with defeat and exhaustion. "I, I always wanted to do good, but things never quite went right, and before I even realized what was happening everything spiraled out of control…"

I trailed off I didn't want to tell the whole story from start to finish again I had already done this once today. Between that and the Endbringer battle I was emotionally exhausted already. But this couldn't wait. If I put it off now I would never tell him. So I started from the beginning I walked him through everything from my first night out up until the end of the Endbringer fight. The whole time I watched a mosaic of emotions flow across his face, fear, pride, guilt, shock. For now I didn't tell Dad about what had happened after Panacea healed me, what was I supposed to say? Revealing Shadow Stalkers Identity could land us both in serious trouble, not to mention what happened with Armsmaster. Dad wouldn't be able to understand that at all. I might be able to make him understand but right now I was simply too wrung out to do so.

For a long time Dad says nothing and I am content to let everything I've told him sink in while I sip my tea.

"Is it possible for you to… to just stop being a villain, and become a hero?" Dad asks.

"I… yes, it is possible."

"How?"

"I… I got… a couple of offers today, from two very powerful people." I answer carefully. "If I were to accept either of their offers it would mean no longer being a villain." I fidget uncomfortably

Dad shot up from his slumped position. "That's great!" I couldn't help but cringe at the excitement in Dad's voice.

"It… it's not that simple Dad accepting either offer comes with consequences. Both have serious downsides, I'm… I'm honestly not sure what would be worse; staying a villain or accepting one of the offers."

I couldn't bring myself to look him in the eye. What I said was true, but I doubted Dad would be able to understand it not without another long exhausting conversation. Dad seemed to take that in for a moment and consider the implications. No doubt he was trying to understand what could be worse than staying a villain.

"Taylor, what aren't you telling me? What sort of offers did these people make, and who are they?"

Another deep breath, this would be the moment of truth I supposed.

"I got a pair of job offers Dad, from two different cape groups… as for who made the offers, well I think you've heard of both of them, Lady and Legend, they both tried to recruit me." Watching Dad's mouth drop open was priceless. Even as tired as I was that look of shock wrung a small smile out of me.

"Lady the Tinker from the Black Company and Legend leader of the Protectorate both offered you a job!"

I started to laugh. I couldn't help it. The whole day had been an emotional roller coaster, and here was Dad his eyes bugging out of his head over what to me felt like the smallest of my currently long list of problems. Never mind that the Undersiders and I were still on rocky footing, or that one of my bullies was a Ward, or that fucking Armsmaster had tried to kill me with Leviathan. No the job offers were nowhere near the top of my list and here was Dad freaking out over them. As my laughter settled down into small chuckles almost a minute later Dad finally seemed to pull himself together.

"Well that settles it then you're joining the Wards, end of discussion."

Wait, what?!

"Dad, you don't understand, I can't join the Wards. It's just not… it can't work."

Dad frowned at me. "Taylor you're joining the Wards, you can't stay a villain and there is no way I'm going to allow you to become some hired gun who travels the world killing for whoever pays the most." Dad wasn't quite shouting but his voice had taken on a harder edge.

Damn it all, I knew he wouldn't understand. I would just have to make him see reason. Deep breath Taylor, the best way to approach this is to stay calm and make a sound, logical argument. If I let my emotions get the best of me he won't hear a word I say.

"Dad, there is more going on here than you understand… I'll tell you, but only if you swear, swear on Mom's grave that what I tell you never leaves this room." That sentence hangs in the air. I'm asking him a lot. Asking Dad to swear on Mom's grave is… I don't know if I'm crossing a line but he needs to understand the gravity of the situation. If he spilled the beans it could wreck the Endbringer truce or give the Protectorate enough leverage to throw me in jail, he needed to understand the seriousness now before I explained things.

Dad was visibly nervous at such a request; never the less he eventually nodded. "Alright Taylor, if it's that serious. I swear on Annette's grave, whatever it is you're about to tell me stays between us."

"OK then, OK." I took a deep breath before facing Dad again. "The reason you can't tell anyone what I'm going to tell you is because one of the topics could get both of us thrown in jail, in my case potentially the birdcage if I'm unlucky." Dad looked horror stricken at the thought of me being sent to the cage. "The other topic… Dad if it were to get out it would mean the end of the Endbringer truce. That means when the Endbringers show up the villains wouldn't fight with the hero's because they would no longer trust the hero's not to stab them in the back. Dad if that happened… the heroes will take more losses than ever, and the villains will still be completely intact in the aftermath of attacks. If that happens everything will fall apart in a matter of years, maybe less. Do you understand Dad? What I'm going to tell you can NOT get out. Not just for me or you, but for everyone."

Dad swallowed nervously, good.

"I already I told you I fought today, even managed to hurt that monster some, drew him away from a shelter." Dad nodded. "What I brushed over was how badly I got hurt doing that. Leviathan broke my spine, among other things. If it wasn't for Panacea… Thing is she mislead me on purpose to get some little bit of revenge for what Tattletale and I did at the bank. She made me think they were going to arrest me in spite of the Endbringer truce. So I used my bugs to get the keys to my handcuffs and try to escape. I ran into another patient's room by accident, a Wards room." I took a deep breath. "Shadow Stalkers room, I recognized her. Dad, she was one of the girls that shoved me in the locker." Dad seemed to freeze up so I pushed on before he could interrupt or explode. "Armsmaster caught me in there, dragged me out. That's when Legend showed up. He offered me three options, jail, the wards or trust my civilian ID with Stalker."

Dad stayed silent a frown marring his face the only indication that he understood what I was telling him.

"That's when Tattletale and the Undersiders stepped in to help me, they didn't even have to Dad, they just decided that it was what they wanted to do. Tattletale black mailed Legend with the security of the Endbringer truce. See Armsmaster decided that I was too much of an embarrassment to him, so he decided to set me up to be killed by Leviathan, along with a bunch of other villains. He set us up to be killed so that he could have a one on one fight with Leviathan, he honestly thought he could kill it, and that with so many of the city's major villains dead he could fix the city in the aftermath."

"He was wrong, his weapon couldn't kill leviathan and he messed up because I lived. Tattletale pieced it all together in the aftermath and threatened to tell everyone what he did if they didn't leave me alone… So Armsmaster told the Undersiders what I'd been planning, before I had my change of heart. Then Lady stepped in. She convinced me to go back and own up to everything, explain myself to my team and to Legend. Legend tried to convince me that Shadow Stalker wouldn't get away with what she had done to me, told me they would have to investigate, but he couldn't look me in the eye and tell me that she wouldn't still get away with it. That's when Lady offered me a place in the company."

For ten long silent minutes Dad remained silent. He stared vacantly into his cup of tea, while I fidgeted nervously in my seat. Finally Dad spoke.

"You're joining the Wards." Dad spoke with finality. "You're not going to run off and become some mercenary soldier, and you sure as hell are not going to stay a villain. We'll bring all the evidence you have with us to the PRT when we get you signed up. We will make them do something about Shadow Stalker, they'll have to."

My mouth hung open in shock. He couldn't mean that! He couldn't possibly believe that! "Dad I just told you Legend, the Legend, couldn't even guarantee me that anything would be done about Shadow Stalker. Why would you even think that the PRT would do anything about her? Not to mention I'm a criminal to them. Dad, If I walk into that base in my civilian identity and tell them that I'm Skitter and I want to join the Wards they don't even have to accept! They could just lock me up to keep what I know from getting out!" I tried; I tried so hard to keep my voice level, to not shout, to appear rational. I just couldn't do it. As I'd talked my voice had steadily rose until I was shouting at the end, hands clenched tight into fists in my lap.

"Then we'll make them do something about her."

Just like that, he thinks he can force the PRT to cave to the demands of some random dockworker and a minor villain. Did he even hear himself? He couldn't even convince the mayor to put in the money to get the ferry rebuilt and he thought he would be able to convince the PRT to give up an established Ward in exchange for a minor villain.

I laughed, cold and hard and utterly mirthless. I laughed in my father's face, it was just too funny. They would never give me a fair chance, we had nothing that we could in good conscience use to force them to, and all they had to do was lock me up and throw away the key, maybe Dad to just to make sure he didn't talk. Yet here he was acting like we could actually do something about it. After everything else it was just too damned funny.

My laughter subsiding I stared Dad in the face and told him as much. He just shook his head.

"We'll make them do something about her." Again with the same conviction and certainty as before, still calm.

"You aren't listening to me Dad. If we walk in there all that's going to happen is they lock the two of us up to keep us from blabbing what we know and ruining the Endbringer truce. It won't even be hard. They'll lock me up for what I did as Skitter and you for threatening to reveal the civilian identity of a Ward! Dad trust me everything I've seen, done, and heard tells me that there is no way I can join the Wards and not get shafted by it! And God help us if Stalker ever finds out who I am under the mask because she's enough of a psycho to try and _kill_ me, maybe even kill you just to hurt me!" I was screaming now. Couldn't Dad understand what was happening here? Couldn't he see the obvious conclusion of what he was suggesting?

Dad went red in the face, and he yelled right back. "Trust you? Trust you?! My God Taylor, how the hell am I supposed to trust you after this! You lied to me for months! You became a super villain behind my back! And now you get an offer from the head of the Protectorate to join the Wards and you want to turn it down! And for what?! So you can stay a villain?! So you can run off and join the damned Black Company and get shot at by drugged up rebels in Africa! _Clearly_ I can't trust your judgment, because if I could you would have done the right thing months ago!"

I felt like I'd been slapped.

Guilt over everything I'd done, over all the lies I'd told to Dad welled up inside me, but along with that guilt came anger. How dare he sit there and judge me! I knew full well that I had made mistakes, that I had screwed up. But I knew the score with the PRT and Protectorate. They didn't give a damn about me except to keep me from doing any more damage to their reputation, and they would take whatever path they felt was most likely to minimize that potential. They wouldn't care that I had tried to do the right thing in my own roundabout way, or that the system had screwed me over. No all they would see would be a villain to put behind bars.

"Tomorrow you and I are driving down to the PRT, we will sort this mess out and that is the end of it."

No. No I would not let him do this. I wouldn't go to jail simply because Dad was too damned stubborn ignorant or stupid to know what he was doing.

"No." it came out a whisper but my gaze held firm. I wasn't joining the organization that allowed my trigger to happen. No way in hell.

"Excuse me." Dad starred me down. "I am your father, and since you clearly can't be trusted to make decision like this I am telling you. Tomorrow we are signing you up for the Wards!"

"And I told you they will lock me up and throw away the key! That they don't give a damn about what's right, only about what suits their needs! And I refuse to join a group that let one of their members get away with shoving me in that locker!" I was screaming. Dad needed to understand! Why couldn't he understand!

"Taylor, I am you're father and you will respect me and my decision!"

Something inside of me snapped. I had come clean, been honest, more honest than I probably should have been. And this was what I got for it. I had my failures thrown in my face by my father, and he ignored everything I had told him and decided that he would just go out and fix everything. As if he possibly could. I wouldn't be part of it. I refused to get arrested simply because he was too bullheaded to listen to or trust his own daughter.

I left, ignoring his shouts for me to come back, and his demands that I listen to him. I stood and marched back out into the night. I had no clear destination in mind, no plan of where I would go from here, just the knowledge that If Dad couldn't be trusted, then I was better off not being home.


	3. 1-3

AN: Don't own Worm or Chronicles of the Black Company. If I screwed something up just let me know, most of my medical knowledge comes from watching episodes of M.A.S.H. so I'm not sure how accurate the procedure below really is.

Company Girl 1.3

Croaker

Taking a clamp firmly in hand I used it to pinch closed a bleeding artery. Now that the damned thing wasn't pumping blood like a hose I stitch it back together. I let my power seep into the reconnected ends. While my power goes to work on the artery I go about removing foreign matter from the gash on the cape's leg.

My power is a frustrating thing. It'll work on damn near anything including master effects and age, but God is it ever a slow thing. My power works like a slow acting acid. It eats away at anything keeping someone from being at their physical, or mental, peak, but only one thing at a time. It can be a damned nuisance when some of the brothers come in begging me to cure their hangovers after a night on the town, every one of them begging me to fix them first. If I wasn't a surgeon my power would, in all likelihood, be worthless in the field for anything but minor wounds.

By the time I've finished removing the grit and muck from the capes leg wound the artery is beginning to heal over. Satisfied that it won't start leaking and leave the poor bastard bleeding internally I remove the clamp and switch my powers focus over to mending the ripped flesh even as I begin to stitch the wound closed. My hands deftly tie off a knot as I finish my stitching, I've developed a practiced ease at this over the years.

I make a note on his chart that he should receive about a week of bed rest and antibiotics. Tossing aside my scrubs I plop down into a nearby chair and let my power work on my fatigue. I'd gotten a bit of sleep during the flight here, but I still hadn't gotten a full night's sleep in a bit over a week.

"Oh, have you already healed him?"

Glancing up I realized I was being addressed by a girl in a hooded robe which played up the medic feel with the white and red color scheme. A local named Amy Dallon, who went by Panacea in costume, a world famous healer.

Reflexively I reached out with my power, checking for any injuries. It was a habit I had developed over the years. Someone walks up to me in a hospital; they probably needed healing, and slow as my power might be it's the perfect tool for diagnostic work.

Panacea wasn't suffering from any physical injury, but there was a great deal of tension in her muscles and she was tired; signs of stress, and being overworked. More interestingly though was the clear signs of someone tampering with her emotions. I'd seen that sort of tampering before, only much worse in both cases. The first incident had been when we had captured one of the Dominator's Taken, poor bastard. The second was one of Heartbreaker's girls we had crossed paths with while working a bounty job in Canada underneath the noses of the Guild. Amy's case wasn't as bad as either of those, but it clearly wasn't doing her any good.

I briefly considered mentioning it but quickly discarded the idea. Telling someone they've been mastered can either make things worse, or not improve them at all. Besides I don't really have the time right now to go about fixing the damage. Even if it degraded naturally over time in addition to what my power could do this would probably take a month of concentrated effort to undue. No, for now I would keep my mouth shut and let the Captain know. Finding out the master's identity would have to come first. So for the moment I put a smile on my face and answer the question.

"Yeah, supposedly he was the last one, and he'll be good as new in a week or so. Take a load off. You look dead on your feet."

"I could just,"

"Nah, leave well enough alone. It's good to reminded them they aren't immortal. Being laid out for a week helps them remember that."

She seemed torn at first before finally nodding and collapsing into a nearby chair. The girl gives me the once over, and promptly freezes up when she notices the insignia on my uniform. I do my best not to grin at her reaction, if nothing else this should be amusing. It's always interesting to find out what kind of opinion people have about us, especially since we try to spread our own rumors into the mix regularly. After all, when the Company comes to town we want everyone to be shitting themselves before they even know what side we are on.

"You're with the Black Company?!" Panacea started to glance nervously at the patient like she thought I might have poisoned him or something.

"Yup, names Croaker."

"That can't be your real name." I snort a bit.

"It is not."

"So it's a cape name? Where is your mask?"

"Hardly, it's the name I took when I joined the Company. And my gas mask folds out of my helmet. I'm not operating, and we aren't being attacked with a gas or pathogen so I'm not wearing it." I manage to keep the smile I'm feeling down to just a twitch of my lips.

"Why would you need a gas mask?" Now I simply raise an eyebrow. It's not exactly a stupid question, but the answer should be fairly obvious since I just explained why I wasn't wearing it at the moment.

"Right, dumb question." I shrugged. "So, what are you doing here, the company that is?"

"A few things actually. I'm here to provide a bit of medical aid, and we have a few of our officers going around seeing if anyone might be interested in joining the company. We don't do Endbringer fights, to many normal's, not enough capes, and none of them the type that makes a difference in those fights. Sometimes we find someone that's sick of the cape game and doesn't want to fight Endbringers, were the best option outside of retirement for that sort. Then there are always a few normal's who lose everything in an attack that decide to join up just to put their old life behind them. Another good reason is the leaders of the Protectorate are all here right now. So it seemed like the best place to drop of the Siberian's body." Amy had been nodding along with my explanation, though she seemed a bit upset that we used Endbringer attacks as recruitment drives. When I mentioned the Siberian though, her eyes went wide.

"You killed the Siberian?!"

"Well not me personally." I say doing a lazy little stretch. "I'm a pretty good shot but I was busy patching up a couple of our guys at the time."

"But how? She's supposed to be invulnerable?"

"Oh she was, but that was the trick. Siberian was only ever a projection. The real pain was figuring out who controlled her but once we did that, bang, one shot through the heart."

"Jesus." She seemed content to sit in silence for a minute. "Can I ask you something?"

I grunted something affirmative.

"Carol, er, my Mom, Brandish. She always said the Company was a group of black hearted cut throats, killers and villains, but you don't seem…" She trailed off floundering for the right word and possibly embarrassed by what she just said.

I just barked out a laugh.

"Well she's partly right, but only partly." I get out between chuckles. "You wouldn't have known but I'm probably the best to ask about this sort of thing. You mind a brief history lesson?" Amy nods her acceptance.

"The Company is roughly 300 years old. Our forbearers fought and died for one country or tribe or whatever all over Africa. We have a history of being the most cunning and toughest group of soldiers to ever bear arms down there. That reputation is well earned. Back in those days rape, murder, and torture was the norm. Then things started changing. European colonies, guns, the world wars. At some point rape and pillaging become discouraged, then a few decades later forbidden. The Captain, at both times, said it was for the survival of the Company, couldn't survive in the face of a joint attack by a group of nations that might find our methods too barbaric to be allowed, or something like that. It was true, but also just an excuse to do away with some unsavory practices. All that was before capes came into the equation, now that changed everything."

Amy was listening intently, I idly wondered if she was a fellow history buff.

"Most people know about that first hero to die here in the states, what they don't realize is he wasn't the first cape to ever get killed. The Company has the earliest documented cape kill. We were working for this warlord who ruled a patch of jungle right? Well one of his subjects triggers with the power to control vines. Kid calls himself 'The Jungle' and goes about attacking us and this warlord's regular army. At first everyone is freaking out, going all superstitious, think the jungle is swallowing men whole. Then we realize we're dealing with a cape. Poor kid never stood a chance. We lured him into a trap with some false rumors about an attack on this little village and one of our snipers blew his head off."

Amy seems a bit sick to her stomach so I move on quickly.

"That's when somebody has the bright idea to rebrand ourselves. The Black Company, cape killers for hire. Suddenly every minor nation in Africa wants to hire us to put down some revolutionary or other. We came into the region capes on the side we weren't hired by go into hiding, and we would hunt them down. Couple tried preemptive strikes, and a few came and joined up for one reason or another."

"How did a group of non capes with no tinker tech manage to consistently take down capes?"

"By getting as much information as we could ahead of time, by only taking the jobs we were sure we could complete, and by fighting in military units against single opponents. We came up with and employed dozens of tactics, usually some variation on an old classic we'd been using for decades, but each one had a unique twist designed to deal with whatever power the cape in question had. Point is we were good at it and we got paid well. Then we faced off against the Dominator about eight years back. We were fighting under Lady, alongside the White Rose's revolution. Everyone took heavy losses, and in the end we lost the region to that shadow wielding bitch when no one could muster up the forces to throw her out. Still, that put us on the world stage. After that everyone in the Company had to toe the line. We couldn't afford to have the Protectorate after us. So the Captain, our current Captain that is, came up with what might be the ballsiest move in company history." I grin at how Amy is eagerly listening it isn't often I find someone so interested in our history.

"The Captain sets up a meeting with the UN, says that we'll bring in or bring down villains for any country willing to let us in their borders so long as they instate a bounty system, including a dead or alive clause for particularly nasty characters. The nine already existed as a precedent, and with our track record, and a promise that we would keep our people in line it was only a few months before we started taking out dangerous capes for bounties in first world countries instead of third world ones. Ever since we've been trying to build up our numbers again so we can start taking real contracts. So Miss Dallon, the answer to your question is that the Company is made of seasoned killers, but we aren't raping pillaging, bastards either. We have our morals, and at the moment at least were only bounty hunters. Once we manage to build our numbers back up we might start taking military contracts again though."

"Working for warlords." Amy accuses. I chuckle.

"Yes working for warlords, in some regions the options are warlords or anarchy." Amy looks stunned and I laugh some more. "Didn't know that huh? The PRT doesn't have the jurisdiction to just go after super powered killers outside of the US. The Guild is a bit more flexible, but they still have a mountain of paperwork and legal hoops to jump through before they can do anything. Even if either group could go after them they don't have the resources to fight wars, or to go about setting up new governments halfway across the planet. And truth be told, as bad as some Warlords are they do bring some semblance of security, and law to their respective domains. So the news keeps their mouths shut about all of it and the PR machine that is the protectorate keeps the focus at home, on their victories."

"That's, it still seems wrong, working for them." Amy says staring at her shoes.

"Fighting, and in my case healing, are what the Company is good at. We apply that skill to earn money, and as part of the deal we get to be part of a brotherhood, a family. We're not so different from the PRT in that regard. The difference is we don't give a damn about public relations, and when we go out and fight killers we don't hold anything back. Our lives, and the lives of our brothers, mean a hell of a lot more to us than some asshole with a bounty."

"But that's… every life is valuable."

I laugh.

"You are right. Every life has value." I chuckle again. This had been a bit of a recurring joke with the company for a few years now. Poor girl couldn't have known she had just set me up for the punch line. "The more they kill the more valuable they are. Miss Dallon, Amy, you're looking to put the company into a neat little category, but we're not heroes or villains. We're soldiers and killers, held together by history, against a world that wants to use us or destroy us. Well for more than 300 years we've spit in the worlds face and kept right on going."

On a whim I take out one of those business cards the Captain gave to all of us and hand it to Amy.

"You don't seem all that happy. Granted Leviathan just hit your hometown but even so. If you ever get tired of this shit, or could use another healers help give me a call. I can fix anything from master powers to brain tumors, so long as I've got enough time to work."

Amy looks ready to try and return the card when Lady walks into the room, the picture of poise and decorum.

"Croaker, are you finished here? The Captain wants everyone back before dark." Nodding I stand.

"I was just wrapping up an impromptu history lesson. Keep the card Miss Dallon, you can even call just to talk shop if you want. Not too many healers out there after all."

Without even looking back I follow Lady out the door and out the building. We both keep our silence, content just being in each other's presence. We could tell each other about what luck we did or did not have recruiting, or about the wounds I patched up, but there wasn't really any point. We would just have to repeat it all for the Captain soon enough anyway.


	4. The Girl With Green Guns

AN: After some discussion on the sufficient velocity thread I decided to take one readers suggestion and this is the result of that suggestion. To make this work I have made several small changes to the first post. I gave Miss Militia's lines to Battery. Enjoy!

The Girl with Green Guns.

I turned on my heel bringing around the silenced pistol ready to kill the Turkish soldier using myself and the other children as minesweepers. A shot rang out before I could pull the trigger. I flinch expecting to feel a bullet slamming into me. I'm surprised that no pain is forthcoming, and more so when the soldier in front of me collapses, blood bubbling up out of his mouth and a red patch spreading across his left side.

More shots ring out and the other Turkish soldiers drop like flies. Red fountains bursting across their bodies as bullets ripped through them.

For a moment everything was quiet save the groaning of the wounded. Then sounds of men moving through the forest filled the air. Only a few moments' later five men in black and grey soldier clothes emerged from the trees, each carrying an automatic rifle, several grenades, a large knife, and a large pack across their back. With only a thought the gun shifted to match the rifles these new soldiers carried. I aim the new weapon at them but do not shoot. They had killed the Turks, but had not shot any of us children. For now at least I would wait and see what they intended.

The soldiers shout to each other in a language I do not recognize. Two men went to speak with the other children, while two others moved among the wounded, shooting them to make sure they were dead, and then searching the bodies.

The final member of this new group walked towards me so I raised the rifle in warning. I won't trust them just because they shot the Turks. Seeming to get the message the man stopped walking and shouted something to the others he came with causing them all to stop and look me over. Moving slowly the man who had approached me gently bent down to place his gun on the ground. He then proceeded to do the same with a smaller gun strapped to his thigh, his knife and the pair of grenades he had across his chest.

The man then walked closer stopping only two meters away, before sitting down cross legged in front of me. Now that the man was closer I could make out a patch on his chest a skull in a silver circle breathing flames.

"My name is Raven." The man says in broken heavily accented Kurdish. "What is your name? What are you doing here? Who gave you that gun?" The questions come slowly as he seams to struggle to find the correct words.

"My name is Hana, the Turks were using us to check for mines." As I say this the man's eyes light up with rage and his head snaps around to glare daggers into the dead Turks. With a frustrated grunt he turns back to face me.

"Who gave you the gun?" He says repeating his earlier question.

"No one." I let the gun shift back into a black and green blur before it quickly reforms into the smaller lighter pistol from before. I take a moment to appreciate that the lighter gun is easier to hold up. The man does not seem at all concerned about the fact I am pointing a gun at him, though he does seem surprised to see the gun change.

"Parahuman." The word means nothing to me. The man shakes his head. "I'd like to get you and the other children out of here."

"I won't fight for you." I say and raise the gun to point directly into the man's face. The other men raise their guns as if preparing to fire. Raven looks angry.

"I'm a member of the Black Company, Hana. Have you ever heard of us?"

"No." Raven nods his head like he was expecting that answer.

"We are," he stumbles trying to remember a word before shouting to one of his men.

"Mercenaries." The man shouts back.

"We are mercenaries, we fight for those who pay us. But we have our own rules. We do not... hurt women or children, unless they are trying to hurt us. We do not make anyone fight for us, joining the company is choice."

"Can you prove that?" Again the man shouts to his companions repeating what I said, they then shout something back. When he again looks at me there is a measure of respect in his eyes.

"No, but you can always shoot me."

"So can you." I eye the other four. Raven shakes his head.

"We don't shoot kids."

I can tell this will only repeat itself if we continue, so I settle for giving Raven a pointed look and considering my options. There are too many for me to kill before they can kill me. I could try to run but with the forest still being full of traps that would be a death sentence. If he is lying I can try and fight or sneak away, if he's telling the truth…

Mind made up I lower the gun and nod my acceptance of the situation. Smiling Raven reaches his hand forward. For a moment I tense up ready to shoot him, only to relax as Raven rubs his hand on the top of my head. It feels strange after everything that has happened. Though I think I like it.

Stepping back Raven collects his weapons before leading the group back through the jungle going only he knows where. I make sure to follow his footsteps exactly.

{}{}{}{} Raven

"You can't keep her Raven, the girl is what fourteen, twelve? A girl that young doesn't belong in the middle of a war zone, you must realize that."

"Captain, the girl is a parahuman." The command tent falls silent in the wake of my outburst.

"Fuck." Greasy, one of the new sergeants, mutters.

"... Is she on the list?" The Lieutenant asks.

"No, some Turks were using her and the others to sweep for mines. She's only had her powers a few hours." The atmosphere in the tent relaxed immediately. Child soldiers are far too common these days, and no of us like dealing with them, enemy or friendly.

Kids with powers were highly valued almost universally, young enough to mold or manipulate easily, and powerful enough to make a difference all on their own. They are every warring group with no morals greatest resource.

"Just ship her out to America." Mercy replied flippantly. "Let their Protectorate deal with the girl."

"Thought of that." I grunted and flipped a magazine onto the table. "Page twelve."

The Captain leaned forward and began flipping through the pages. The tent was silent as he read the article.

"This must be a joke."

"No joke Captain."

"What's it say?" The Lieutenant asked.

"The Protectorate is in the process of founding a group for kid crime fighters. They want to put kids with powers out on the street against armed thugs and gangsters."

"That's stupid, most capes go down plenty easy if you put a bullet in them, and it's not like it's that much harder to do." Tom-Tom grumbled as his fingers beat a mindless ditty on his little drum.

"My point exactly, and to make matters worse it's America. The fact that they are training child soldiers doesn't mean they are going to come out and admit it. They are going to dress those kids up in shiny costumes, give them a bunch of non lethal weapons and tell them 'try not to get killed when some idiot with a gun starts shooting', same as they do with the Protectorate."

At the mention of the Protectorate the tent was filled with scoffs and sneers. To a group of men that fought and died with and against capes on a regular basis the idea of Parahumans as paragons of virtue, or symbols of hope was nothing but a joke. The Captain merely brought his fingers together and rested his chin upon them.

"So if we hand her over to the local government she becomes a child soldier and almost certainly winds up dead. We send her to America and the government will arrange for her to be adopted by a family who will sign her up for this, Wards team, without even questioning if it's a good idea. At which point she still becomes a child soldier only they dress it up pretty and give her a major handicap against people that will shoot to kill."

I nodded my concurrence with the Captain's analysis while playing with the handle of my combat knife.

"You're dead set on not letting her fight, anywhere that is?" I nod. "Well then, all things considered there is only one thing to say about all this."

"Captain?" The Captain walked around the table in the middle of the tent, coming to a stop in front of me and handing me a cigar.

"Congratulations Raven, it's a girl." After a moment the tent exploded into laughter.

{}{}{}{} Hana

I had spent the better part of the past two weeks following either Raven or Tom-Tom. Both had taken to teaching me to speak English. So far my understanding of the language was limited. But my vocabulary and understanding were growing quite quickly.

Since gaining my powers I could remember everything in perfect detail, it is strange but extremely useful for learning new languages. I do my best to listen to every conversation I hear and I was picking up bits of other languages in the process. French, Spanish, German, a half dozen other languages I had yet to identify and perhaps most interesting was sign language. I don't know enough English yet to ask what the signs mean but I think I know what a few of them are.

I had also found myself, not unable to, but rather not needing to sleep. Finding something to do with the extra hours was difficult. Out of necessity most of the people who made up the Black Company are light sleepers, something about combat apparently. The problem was that I needed to be quiet, so as not to wake anyone up. Most nights were spent either puzzling through the even more confusing written version of the English language, looking at pictures of different types of guns and weapons to add to my powers versatility, or playing solitaire with the deck of cards Raven had given me.

I like Solitaire, but the game is frustrating and monotonous. I had taken to wandering the edges of the camp to see the men standing guard for a few nights. Many of those men are not happy to see me. They are mostly tired, grumpy, and rude. I have not been allowed to do that since the night Raven had to come looking for me at two in the morning before taking over a shift of the watch.

Because I do not sleep the men have taken to calling me; little sentry, little night owl, Raven's owl, and nocturnal. I am not sure if nocturnal is supposed to be a name or a description. The way the men say it could suggest either, it could also be a curse in some cases.

"Come on girl. Time to get some grub, we'll see about teaching you how to properly complain about powdered eggs." Tom-Tom calls as I place down the three of hearts on top of a growing stack. Funny I didn't realize it was morning already. Casting a final glare at the game of solitaire I follow Tom-Tom out into the camp.

The little Black man's fingers beat a haphazard rhythm upon his little drum. Every so often one of the vibrations sets a pulse through the air, something about his power though he hasn't ever bothered to explain it to me.

As we trot across the compound I observe everything and everyone. Most of the men are making their way to the mess hall for food, a few are heading for the showers or latrine, but everyone is armed. No one is ever far from their weapon. They rarely wear full combat gear on base, and by regulation no gun may have a round chambered while on the base, except in the event of an attack, but weapons are always on hand. The men are always ready to fight.

It is, interesting. They can laugh and joke and sleep as if nothing is wrong. Yet all around them are weapons, which prove quite clearly that everything is not well, that at any moment they could be forced to fight or die. It is a strange contradiction which defies my understanding. I reach down and pat the combat knife which is the current manifestation of my power. Raven had given me a knife sheath to hold it in so I would not constantly have to carry a physical weapon, and to hide the fact I had powers from any unfriendly observers.

I run my finger along the sheath and knife. I suppose I'm never far from my weapon either. The comparison brings a small smile to my lips, though I'm not sure why.

Walking through the line I am, as usual, surprised at the quantity of food that it takes to feed so many people, though I am beginning to grow accustomed to the sight. Tom-Tom says something to the man giving out the food. I recognize the words eggs, and toast though I am unfamiliar with the word Bacon. I quickly realize it must be the strips of meat which are placed on my tray. They smell delicious.

Tom-Tom and I sit down near his brother, One-Eye, and a short ugly man named Goblin. The two are normally quite funny to watch. Sadly they have something of a truce going until they have both downed their first cup of the bitter drink called coffee.

"Tom-Tom, Owl girl, what are the two of you up to this morning." One-Eye grumbles around a fork full of the yellow stuff that _does not_ taste like eggs.

"Raven's coming back today, was talking about teaching the girl to shoot if her power hasn't taught her already." Tom-Tom responds.

"Raven is coming back?"

"Yup, little owl, sometime around noon supposedly."

With a nod and a smile I turn back to my eggs. Raven likes to act scary, but I can see passed his act. There is more to him, a soft spot for children certainly, though it manifests in other small ways as well. Raven is certainly one of my favorite members of the company along with Tom-Tom and the bickering duo we are seated across from. Maybe I just appreciate these three more because, like me, they also have powers. The again it's fun to watch the shadowy prank wars unfold too.

I giggle as Goblin twitches his fingers in mad patterns and a fat hairy spider materializes out of smoke above One-Eye and descends on a string into the middle of his tray. Just like that the duo is off on another one of their games. I wonder if they do it more because they know I find it funny.

{}{}{}{}

Raven was giving me a very stern look, had been in fact for the better part of the past twenty minutes. Tom-Tom was sitting nearby with a Laptop and a old leather bound book. I'd asked him about it before. Apparently one of his jobs was to be the company's annalist. As the only person who could type, knows English, and the various languages the original annals had been written in, it was his job to copy the old annals in English onto the computer so they could be more easily copied and protected. It was also his job to keep the Annals up to date.

From what he had explained the Annals were the history of the company, every major battle and every member to ever be a part of the company was recorded in them. He had shown me the file that listed the name of every dead brother, how they died and who the company was serving at the time. It was enormous, going on for more than a hundred pages and it was not even finished yet! Tom-Tom told me the Annals are almost religious to the company because your name wasn't forgotten, because hundreds of years from now there would be a new generation of brothers who would carry the names of the dead with them. Immortality of a sort he called it. I'm not sure what immortality means though.

For some reason he thought Raven teaching me to shoot belonged in the Annals. When I asked him why he just laughed and shook his head before ruffling my hair. A lot of the brothers have taken to doing that lately.

Finally giving up on glaring at me Raven passed me a picture of a small gun.

"It's called a BB gun. It shoots a small circle of metal about this big." Raven hold up two fingers closely together. "There is no gun powder and it's rather slow compared to most weapons. However it is much safer to learn with than a real gun. See if you can make one."

Nodding I focus my power and quickly the knife reforms into the 'BB gun'. Raven nods his head in acknowledgment.

"Now the first rule of handling any gun; you only point it as something if you plan to shoot it. Otherwise you point it away from yourself and anyone else." Taking the gun he demonstrates pointing it mostly towards the ground but out at enough of an angle for it to be away from his feet.

"Now you." Raven says and hands the gun back to me. I take a moment to adjust my hold on the gun and glance up at Raven who nods.

"Alright, good. If you have to carry a gun, and you aren't shooting, you carry it like that. Next lesson, if you are not shooting a gun the safety is on at all times."

Raven reaches down and flips a tab on the gun. "Safety off." He flips it back. "Safety on. You can't fire a gun when the safety is on. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, even if the safety is on when you don't expect to need to fire your weapon make sure that it is not loaded. Or if it is loaded than make sure there is not a bullet in the chamber, in other words make sure that there is not a bullet ready to be fired. With this gun you put a round, which is another word for bullet, in the chamber by cocking it, like so."

Taking the gun back raven pulls forward a metal piece near the trigger and below the wooden part called the stock.

"Please reform the weapon."

I do so. For a brief moment the gun becomes a green and black blur before it reforms as the same BB gun. Raven looks it over and raises an eyebrow before glancing at me and raising it up to his shoulder. As Raven pulls the trigger a quiet whistling noise followed by a light ping of metal on metal reveals that the BB gun reformed loaded with the safety off.

"Please reform the weapon unloaded and with the safety on." Raven says while giving me a look of mild disapproval.

Once more I reform the weapon while focusing on the idea of the safety being on and the BB not being in the barrel. This time when Raven inspects the gun he nods in satisfaction before handing it back to me.

"Good. From now on whenever you form a weapon outside of combat make sure to form it like that; with the safety on, and the barrel empty. Now next lesson, when using the shooting range before firing you always check to make sure no one is in front of the shooting line. Do you understand?"

Some of the words were new or unfamiliar but from the ones I did know I was fairly certain I understood so I simply nodded. I could always ask Tom-Tom about the unfamiliar words later.

Raven spent the next twenty minutes going over proper shooting stances and giving me a seemingly endless stream of tips with occasional help from Tom-Tom who would explain the concepts in more detail in Kurdish, then repeat them in English to help my vocabulary.

Finally after what seemed much too long a wait I got my chance to shoot.

Steady the gun against my shoulder, feet shoulder width apart, aim down the sights, keep my eyes open. Breathe in, squeeze the trigger lightly, and keep the gun on target. Suddenly the gun kicked, it was only a slight jump, barely anything, but I felt it. With the kick of the gun came the same soft noise from before.

I repeated the process four times before Raven told me to hold my fire, and reeled in the target. Tom-Tom set aside his typing and ambled over to take a look. He quickly glanced at the human shaped outline on the piece of paper before glancing back at me.

"Raven how far out did you have the target?"

"Hundred feet."

"Uh huh, and what's this things effective range?"

"About double that."

"You sure you've never done any shooting before little Owl?"

"No."

"Well then, seems like your little Owl has a good set of eye's Raven. Once she learns to handle some real guns she'll have some nasty talons to go with them."

His piece said Tom-Tom went back to copying the old Annals, but not before taking a few moments to jot something down on paper.

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Another night another game of solitaire. I sigh as I flip the next three cards frowning at the complete and utter lack of the red jack I so desperately need.

Cursing softly in French, German, and Belgian for good measure I shut off the light and lean back letting my eyes adjust to the darkness of the tent. It's a nice night out, no rain. I slip out for a stroll in what little moonlight might make it through the cloud cover.

On a whim my power shifted into a fancy curved dagger which I began to flip. At some point over the past four years I had picked up on Raven's love for knives. While Raven liked to risk a bloody finger by cleaning under his nails with a knife point, I had picked up the skill for flipping knives. It helped that thanks to my power the knives were always perfectly balanced. There had been a few close calls when I started practicing the skill, but now it came as naturally as walking.

The soft noise of the dagger hilt slapping back into my palm as I strolled through the night beat out a calming rhythm. The noise of the local wildlife was strange compared to the forests I grew up in but it still held certain similarities; bugs, bats, and the sounds of nocturnal animals drawn close by the smell of food, but kept at bay by the lights and patrols. Not to mention the fence.

On a whim I turn towards one of the sparring rings on the edge of camp. They are nothing fancy, just circles scratched out in soft dirt but that's more than enough. Settling into a loose stance I let my weapon slip from a dagger into the nebulous green and black energy. Taking a calming breath I let my mind and power cycle through a half dozen melee combat weapons before settling on a jitte, a sort of ancient Japanese police baton.

With a practiced movement I raise the weapon in a block that would catch an attacker's blade between the two metal bars. Shifting my footing and twisting my wrist I perform one of the basic disarming moves followed by a strike to my imaginary adversary's throat.

I pivot on my right heel and bring up my left arm to block an imaginary knife blow by blocking at the wrist. With a quick shift I'm holding a brass knuckle trench knife. Stepping in I swing the blade into where the attackers temple would be, a lethal blow.

I practiced like that for another half hour, shifting between weapons on a whim trying to perfect the timing of certain counters. I was no master with any hand to hand weapon, but I was quickly becoming proficient with quite a few. The sheer variety and outlandish nature of some of the weapons I had been learning to use over the years as well as my ability to easily change weapons in the middle of a fight made me a menace in armed combat. I was a much better shot than a close quarter's combatant, but I was doing my best to fix that. It's great to be a good shot with most any weapon you could name, but I'd heard a fair number of stories about brothers who got killed because they neglected to practice the more dated forms of combat.

The story about the cape that was immaterial until she got within two feet of a living human and fought with knives and short swords was nightmare fuel of the highest caliber. It was also some of my driving motivation for CQC training.

Sitting on a bench I take a drink from my canteen, and just enjoy the sounds and smells of the night. The air is a bit chilly but it doesn't fool me one bit, once the sun comes up the temperature will quickly rise to near unbearable levels.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a figure hunched over, and creeping along the fence. With a bit of a struggle and a clumsy fall the figure managed to get inside the compound. That was not good. The Company had men walking patrols inside and outside of the base, and none of them would ever feel the need to climb over the fence, or be so clumsy about it if they did.

With a quick shift I was holding a pistol, a mauser C96. It was an older style of pistol but one of my favorites. Slipping silently behind the man I tailed him as he snuck through the camp. It quickly became apparent the man knew where he was going. He was ignoring the mess hall and the barracks. He was headed for the officer's quarters. The man had snuck into camp and was heading for officers quarters. There was only one reason for someone to do that.

"Halt!" I called out in the local dialect as I took a firing stance and trained my pistol on his center of mass.

The man spun and flung a flurry of light purple balls at me. Cursing I tried to jump out of the way managing to avoid the majority but I was still hit by several of the lights. Surprisingly I didn't feel any pain. The shock of the apparent lack of effect made me pause. Cursing quietly but apparently unconcerned with me the intruder spun on his heel and made to bolt for the officer's quarters. No longer hesitating I fired three shots from my position on the ground. The awkward firing position threw off my aim slightly the first shot catching the man in the arm before I adjusted and my second and third shot ripped through his back.

Between my shout and the gunshots the camp quickly came alive as members of the Company poured out the various buildings. I didn't pay them too much attention though. My focus was on the man I had shot who was bleeding out on the ground. Strangely I didn't feel all that bad about it. He snuck in here to attack us, to kill us.

I had simply killed him first.

"Looks like the Owl made her first kill, and at night too. She really is an owl." One of the men muttered as he came close only to be smacked upside the head by another brother. I didn't mind though, if anything I felt a bit of pride in living up to their name for me.

"Owl, what the hell happened here?" The Captain's voice boomed out as he ambled forward through the slowly growing crowd. Snapping to my feet in a sort of haphazard at ease stance I answered.

"I was taking a break from practicing my CQC when I saw this man slipping over the fence. I tailed him through the camp until I realized he was headed for officer's quarters. I told him to halt and he launched some kind of light at me. I dodged most of it but several hit me. They didn't seem to do anything. He made to sprint for the officer's quarters and I shot him in the back."

The Captain seemed to mull that over for a moment before he flipped the man I had shot onto his back with a foot. The Captain examined the man's face briefly before standing up straight.

"Those light, were they light purple?"

"Yes sir."

"You lucked out Owl. It's the last of the revolutionaries on our list, Amnesia. Those lights make people forget the past half hour or so. If you didn't have perfect memory he would have had plenty of time to do what he came here for. You are damn lucky he wasn't the kind of blaster who causes explosions." The Captain said. Throughout his short lecture he had fixed me with one of his looks; the kind that promised lots of drills and lectures on tactics.

"Lieutenant, get things organized around here, have the body sent to our employer and let him know our contract is complete. Everyone back to bed! In the morning we start packing up so get some shut eye before then! Owl, you come with me."

Nodding a bit nervously I fell in behind the Captain as he walked back to his quarters. Waving his hand absently the Captain directed me to the one chair in his room while he seated himself on his cot. Knitting his fingers together the Captain simply stared at me for a few minutes while I did my best not to fidget under his inspection.

"Owl, you've been with us for quite some time now. You are seventeen, one of the best shots I've ever met with most weapons I can name and a few I probably couldn't. The sergeants tell me you are a menace in close quarters. You've just killed for the first time."

The Captain paused seeming to gather his thoughts.

"I think it's clear now that we can't allow Raven to put this off any longer. You have options. You can join a hero team either in the States or in Europe, you are plenty skilled, and you know how to work as part of a team. They would be lucky to have you. But make no mistake they will handicap your abilities by insisting you not kill. You can stop using your powers and try to live a normal life somewhere. Though if it ever gets out that you have powers you may not get a choice in the matter. Or you can take the oath and join the Company officially. Raven has been trying to delay this and influence you away from fighting since day one. Now, while he isn't here to lean on you, or me, what are you going to do?"

I took a moment to consider the options before me. It was not the first time I had done so. The arguments for and against each course of action played through my mind at a lightning pace, but in the end it all boiled down to one point. This was my family now, my brothers and uncles, even a few sisters and aunts. This was where I belonged. I had been the Company's Owl for too long to be anyone else.

"I'd like to join the Company, if you'll have me Captain."

Nodding decisively the Captain stood and walked out of the room, going down the hall to bang on a nearby door.

"Tom-Tom! Grab the annals, we're swearing in a new member!"

{}{}{}{}

I looked down the scope of my sniper rifle, a CheyTac Intervention, observing the killing field. I had been waiting three years for this moment. Many of us had.

When an operation against the Slaughterhouse 9 goes wrong the body count is always through the roof. That day had been no exception. We had lost so many people. Out of everyone though, losing Tom-Tom had hurt the most.

I had spent years cursing Jack Slash for somehow recruiting the Siberian, and almost as long cursing whoever had managed to miss the fact that he had done it. We hadn't even been able to recover Tom-Tom's body because the sick bitch had _eaten_ him.

My grip on the rifle tensed and I had to force myself to breath and relax. I couldn't afford to let my emotions affect me. Not now. It would throw off my aim. I focused on my breathing, and heart beat. I calmed myself with reminders that the Company and I were about to get our revenge, and with her gone we would be better able to deal with the remainder of the 9.

"I see him." One-Eye, my spotter, and Tom-Tom's brother said from his position beside me.

"Blue sedan, left lane massive dent in the front bumper."

"I've got it."

"Two thousand meters out and closing, wind coming across from the left, two kph. He's traveling at… 30 kph. No other vehicles. No pedestrians. Fire when ready."

I kept my breathing even and reached up to adjust my scope slightly. Taking my time I trained my sights on the vehicle's only occupant."

"Nineteen hundred meters."

I took a deep breath and adjusted my aim making sure to lead the target. I took a deep breath as I ran through the calculations for the shot again in my head. I slipped off the safety, and placed my finger over the trigger which I began to squeeze lightly. I felt for my heartbeat, and let the steady rhythm of its beet fill my ears.

Between the beats I completed my squeeze of the trigger and the gun barked in my hands my shoulder and supine body absorbing the recoil.

Even as I watched the windshield of the Sedan shatter as my bullet punched through I was already loading the next round into the chamber.

It proved unnecessary. Through the cracked windshield I could clearly see a growing patch of red on the targets chest. Bonesaw was miles away, even if he survived the initial shot she wouldn't make it here in time to save him.

The car swerved out of control but slowed down. Not rapidly like when someone slammed on the breaks. No this was the result of the targets foot jerking off of the gas from the force of the shot.

Ignoring One-Eye's jearing and congratulations I reached up to my earpiece.

"Captain this is Owl. The first shot hit center of mass. Can the recon team confirm the Siberians disappearance?"

"Confirmed Owl. The Siberian just vanished into thin air."

"Permission to put another round into the bastard to be sure he's dead before collecting the body?"

"Make it two, better not to take chances with the 9."

"Two it is sir."

{}{}{}{}

Knocking at my door woke me from my dreaming memories. I took a moment to shake off the memories, before rising to see what whoever was at my door needed.

Raven stood in the doorway. He was getting on in years being in his early forties by my best guess, grey streaks showed clearly in his hair. Despite his age he still carried himself well and had that hard glint to his eyes that fooled most of the world.

"Captain called a meeting to discuss the recruitment potential and the local scene. He wants the senior staff there." I nodded while blinking the last remnants of sleep from my eyes.

"What's the name of this town again? I wasn't really paying much attention to anything after that last mission."

"Brockton Bay; home to Nazi's, a dragon and drug addicts. Supposedly the Captain has his eye on a few of the minor players."

Nodding I grabbed my helmet and followed Raven. Perhaps the meeting would help distract me from the memories.

AN: reviews are always welcome and constructive criticism will never be turned away, just please no flames.


	5. 1-4

Don't own Worm or Chronicles of the Black Company. Does anyone have a high quality image of the company logo? or even just a fire breathing skull I could use as the cover image for this fic? all I could find where skulls covered in flames.

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Croaker

The Captain sat haphazardly in his chair at the far end of the small conference table we used for these meetings here on the Skywhale. His face was etched in his perpetual scowl as his fingers drummed along the tabletop; beating out a rhythm to his thoughts, or perhaps some ditty from his home. Apparently Lady and I are the last to arrive.

"Take a seat you two, we have a fair amount to go over." Nodding, we take our seats. "Now then; reports. One-Eye, did you manage to get in touch with the ABB?"

One-Eye is a grizzly looking little black man with the rattiest little cloth hat to ever see the light of day perched proud as a peacock on his head. As the name implies, he only has the one eye. The other is covered by a black eye patch with the Company emblem on it. I'd offered dozens of times to heal his eye, but he always refused. He lost it in the fight with the Siberian that killed his brother. He groans and bitches about it from time to time, but he treats the damn thing like a badge of honor. In some ways I suppose it is. Not everyone walks away from the Nine with such a relatively minor wound.

"No luck yet. The bastards went to ground before the attack and haven't poked their noses back out yet. Give me a couple days and I'll get them the message."

"Right, get some sleep and get back on it tomorrow." One-Eye just grunted an affirmative. "Goblin, you have any luck? We need to know the local meeting place. Will Kaiser meet with us?"

Goblin is a little white man, even shorter than One-Eye, with a mouth full of crooked teeth and a face like a toad. The little man leaned his head back and cackled like a hyena.

"I know where to meet, some shitty little hole in the wall bar by the name of Summer's Rock. They even have an honest to God deaf waitress!" Goblin squealed gleefully. "But Kaiser won't be joining us. The tin man bought it in the fight with Leviathan." Goblin's face split into a grin at the proclamation. "I did manage to talk with a few of his old lieutenants. Purity, Hookwolf, and one of the twins. They agreed, five days should be enough to get their shit in order. They'll meet with us."

"Kaiser's dead, any idea who will take his place?" Goblin scratched at his chin, before shaking his head.

"Hard to say, Purity and Hookwolf both have the power, but I don't know the Empire's politics. I'll keep an ear to the ground."

I did my best to bite back a snort. No one in the room doubted that Goblin and One-Eye would know everything worth knowing about the city's underworld inside of a week or two. The duo had a natural flare for cons, scams, and all things that exist outside the law. The duo would slip in with the city's criminal elements as naturally as Owl would field strip a rifle. Why the girl insisted on knowing how when she could just use her power was anyone's guess. Still, it was smart. After all, power nullifiers have killed plenty of cocky capes who lacked a backup plan. Rose's kill count was proof of that.

Nodding, the Captain shuffled through some notes he had in front of him.

"Elmo, you have any luck with the travelers?" The sergeant simply shook his head.

"Trickster wouldn't even talk to me. Best bet is they have a new backer here in the bay. Besides, he would most likely be the only one cut out for our line of work, maybe Ballistic."

"What makes you say that?"

"Trickster walks like the kind of cocky prick that wouldn't have an issue with our line of work, but I doubt he would follow orders very well, too arrogant. Sundancer seems like some kid who just got in over her head. Honestly not even sure what's holding them all together."

"Interesting. Lady, what about you, did you make contact with the Undersiders?" The smile on Lady's face is anything but friendly.

"I did, and I had a good bit more luck than the others. Skitter had a falling out with her team just before the Endbringer alarms went off, they crossed a line she wasn't willing to cross. Though I don't know what it was. During the fight Armsmaster set up her, and several other villains, to get killed by Leviathan. She survived and after the fight she stumbled across the civilian ID of one of the Wards. Coincidently that Ward happened to cause her trigger."

Most of the room was now sitting up straight and paying careful attention. Raven put away his knife, Owl stopped stripping and reassembling a pistol, the Captain and Lieutenant both sat up straighter. I simply pulled out a little notebook and my pen and started jotting down notes. I had a feeling this meeting was going to belong in the annals, and I already had a few minutes of playing catch up to do. I started to scribble away, getting down the key points while I listened to what else Lady might have to say.

"You're sure?" The Captain asked.

"Enhanced hearing equipment in my helmet. She came clean with Legend to get the Protectorate off her back. She's on the outs with her team, she'd rather be caged than go to the Protectorate. I'd give it better than even odds that if we stick around long enough for the dust to settle she'll join up."

"Is she worth sticking around that long for?" Elmo asked skeptically. "She controls bugs right? That worth the time?"

"Her first night out she took down Lung with an assist from the Undersiders." The sound of flesh slapping against the table drew all eyes to Rose, whose fingers quickly flashed through signs.

"Lung? Fought Leviathan to a standstill, Lung? Her first night?" Lady's grin grew even wider if at all possible.

"Indeed. She pumped him full of a lovely mix of bug venoms, then used a wasp to sting one of his eyes closed and pepper sprayed the other. It bought her enough time for backup to finish the job. Armsmaster arrived shortly after and administered a tranquilizer. He talked her into letting him take credit for the arrest under the pretense of shielding her from retaliation." Lady gave an amused chuckle. "Obviously, the poor girl never even considered that the PRT would be unable to keep Lung in custody. Though she took it well enough and simply caught him for them again." One-Eye barked out a laugh.

"How did the girl with bug control manage to bring him down a second time?" He asked, scratching at his eye patch.

"She soaked half a caterpillar in a cape secreted paralytic hallucinogen and had it airlifted, then directly applied to his eyeball by some other bugs. Then, to be sure he stayed down until the authorities arrived; she cut his eyes out with a knife." Elmo gave an appreciative whistle.

"Cunning, ruthless, utterly terrifying. I'm sold." The Lieutenant's eyes all but sang with thoughts on what kind of tactics the girl could be used for. The Captain seemed interested but quickly rained in the conversation.

"What about the rest of the Undersiders?" Lady shrugged.

"Bitch didn't seem interested, but I think she was in shock. Regent, Heartbreakers kid, seemed interested when I mentioned going after his father, but beyond that he barely responded. I couldn't get a read on Grue. Tattletale seemed interested. The whole conversation she kept shooting glances my way. If she does join we'll need to pound impulse control into her head before she gets herself, or someone else, killed."

The Captain grunted. Two potential candidates out of an entire city and neither was a sure thing. There would be a few normals, but most would be turned away. The Company might need new blood, but we couldn't take just anyone, and none of us were interested in wasting time on morons.

"Alright then Croaker, you got" The rest of the Captains sentence was cut off as a truly obnoxious and utterly bland ringing came from Lady's helmet, causing everyone to blink in surprise before Lady tapped at a button on her wrist.

"Yes?" Lady's tone made the single word into a scathing dismissal even while it invited the person to explain the reason for their call. I couldn't help but smirk at how her no nonsense tone replaced the slightly more open tone she reserved exclusively for the people currently in the room.

"Why hello Lady, now is that really any way to treat someone looking to hire the Company." The overly cheery and slightly condescending tone of what I was assuming to be a female teen filled the room.

"Ahh Tattletale," Lady said clueing the rest of us in on who exactly was addressing the room. "I'll admit that's an interesting proposal but not at all the reason I left you my card." Lady let some small bit of amusement color her tone. "Though really you'll need to bring such offers to the Captain."

"Ah, but he's with you and I'm on speakerphone anyway, so we might as well cut the bullshit." You could taste the smug. "What do you say Captain I've got-"

"No."

"I, what?" The girl seemed thrown by the immediate refusal. "If it's a matter of money then-"

"I'm afraid you don't understand. The issue has nothing to do with money or what you want us to do. Accepting your offer would be breaking our existing contract with the United Nations. The Black Company honors our contracts." The line was silent for only seconds before the girl was back on the offensive.

"Because I'm a villain. That's not by choice and if you were to take my contract I could get out of the business go straight or even just manipulate things from the background."

"Not our issue. You are a villain. Taking contracts from recognized villains that require action within or against any nation that grants us the freedom to hunt bounties is a breach of contract and cause for an annulment of our contract. It is also grounds for arrest or execution by members of the armed forces or local hero organizations. The company has power and skill but not enough to go toe to toe with the United States military, or the Protectorate, let alone both. All of which is beside the point because the Black Company honors our contracts."

"Then how about a mutually beneficial agreement." Now that got several people's attention. The Captain merely narrowed his eyes.

"Explain." It was an order, not a suggestion.

"My boss, Coil, has a lot of assets in this city, money, weapons, and mercenaries."

Her voice all but sang as she tried to garner our interest. She failed miserably. What did any of us care about a small group of mercs, and their boss's money? We were going to collect the bounty of the Siberian within a week or two we were sitting pretty, we needed people not cash, and while common mercs had the right training they were also prone to jumping ship when someone offered them more cash and that had never been our way.

I the corner Rose and Owl were talking with signs. I didn't catch all of it but it seemed like they were placing a bet on the outcome of the conversation.

"And?" The Captain asked leaning back in his seat a small smirk on his faces. The bastard was clearly starting to enjoy himself causing several of the assembled staff, myself included to chuckle.

For almost a minute the line went silent.

"You don't want money; you have that in spades right now. You're not interested in cut rate tinker tech when you have Lady on staff. You're not interested in taking Coils mercs out from under him. Why aren't you interested in his mercs? I thought you were here recruiting?" The knowing edge to her voice was gone now it was more inquisitive; with a slight edge of panic lacy her words.

"They might be good in a fight but they'd make shit brothers." The Captain replied with a shrug.

"Loyalty, you wouldn't trust them… and you mean it you see them all as family… don't you. Shit."

"What are you after girl, why the rush to turn on your boss." The Captains lazy drawl redirecting the conversation. "Why so desperate to get us to do your dirty work for you? Coil get grabby when he's safe in his den?"

"...The bastards coerced me into working for him, at gunpoint. I've tried to make a break a few times but he's always a step ahead."

Ahh same story different place. Not all that different from child soldiers we'd run across in a few of the messier campaigns before we'd made it into the first world nations.

"Well then it seems like you really only have two options." The Captain's response was bland, bored even. We all knew what was coming and most of us realized this was where the Captain had been going with this from the beginning. He might play up the act of the blustering bear, but the man was sharp when he wanted to be.

"Bastard, you want me to switch from being one assholes pet thinker to yours!"

"Really? You want to be offended after you tried, poorly might I add, to manipulate us into fixing your problems for you?" Lady asked causing Owl to snort, and Goblin to break out into a fit of giggles.

"No one's forcing you to do anything." I cut in. "We're offering you an out, the best one we can give you."

"He'd try to get me anyway and how is this any better?! I'd just be your pet thinker instead of his!" The girl really needed some lessons on impulse control.

"Shut it!" The Captain snapped. "We don't keep pets, we have brothers, and sisters, and we fight for them. Now you can choose to join and we'll keep you out of his hands, or you can put up with things the way they are."

We had her, everyone knew it, we also knew the Company would grow on her given time, she was underhanded and conniving, she'd fit right in.

"... Damn it. Fine I'll join, but I need to get out of the city now while Coil is busy trying to come out on top from all this or I'm dead. I'm at the intersection of Orchard and Main Street."

With a quick gesture and a pointed look from the Captain, Elmo shot off to get the girl. Rose with a frustrated scowl passed Owl a few bills; much to the latter's pleasure.

"Someone's on the way, when you get back we're going to want a full debrief on the city's criminal elements."

"Oh goody, we found a snitch, that much less for me to do." One-Eye groaned before pulling his ratty cap down over his eyes and leaning back in his chair. Goblin snickered before conjuring a small mouse with a single pointed horn to charge One-Eye. A killer whale made of shadow and smoke breached from the table, clamped jaws around the mouse's midsection and sank back into the table. "Ugh save it for another day frog face, let a dead man get some sleep why don't you?"

I couldn't help but chuckle. It wasn't often One-Eye had such a good showing so early in one of their spats and already he was calling for a ceasefire, he must truly be exhausted to not be pushing the advantage. Before Goblin could work up a good steam and start round two the Lieutenant smacked him upside the head.

"Croaker, what about you, anything to report?" The Captain asked sounding only slightly more upbeat than he had a moment ago.

"Hmm, Oh yeah, had a run with Panacea, of all people."

"The Healer?" Rose signed.

"Yeah that's her. Seems like a good kid, black and white morality aside. But that ain't the interesting bit. She's on her way to a breakdown. Whatever she's got going on its wearing her out, and that ain't all."

Most seemed rather disinterested so far. Sure the girl was a powerful but she was born into New Wave, getting the girl to defect from a group she was born into? Pipe dream, and probably more static than it was worth. Besides so long as she wasn't part of the Company her issues were none of our business.

"She's being mastered, it looks a bit like the Dominator or Heartbreakers work but not near as strong. Couldn't tell you who was doing it but it looks more like Heartbreaker than the Dominator so I'm betting it's love, or lust, whichever."

Ahh there we go there are the interested, near venomous, looks I was waiting for. Nothing touched as many nerves with the veterans as the Dominator and his taken. Any master with a similar power had themselves a permanent place right at the top of our shit list, right alongside the Nine.

"Croaker, put our new girl," The Captain paused to think before giving a small grin and a glance at One-Eye. "Put Snitch on this. Tell her what you told us. See if she can figure out who the master is, we'll play it by ear from there."

"One last thing, then you can all go back to whatever the hell you were doing. The Nine gave our observers the slip about sixty miles West of New York. We've just hurt them more than ever before. The Siberian was one of their biggest trump cards, and we've been a thorn in their side for years now. Standard Slaughterhouse procedures are in effect until we know where they are. If they come after us I want everyone ready."

With that said the Captain stood and ambled out of the room, Raven and the Lieutenant not far behind him. Lady gave my hand a squeeze before heading for her workshop while Rose and Owl conversed with impossibly fast signs. Standing and stretching I idly wondered if I could get Goblin and Silent and a few others into a quick game of tonk.

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Read and Review please and thank you!


	6. 1-5

CG 1.5

Danny Hebert: day after the attack, approximately 8 AM

The steady rhythm of my footfalls, the beat of rubber boot soles on concrete is lost in the general chaos and cacophony of the building as I make my way inside with a quick purposeful stride. People are rushing here and there, PRT troopers stand at attention near every door. There are several people in normal if unkempt clothes, many of whom are slumped into seats around the room staring off into nothing, several are wrapped in blankets. There were men and women rushing in and out of the lobby coming and going every which way, most are PRT employees judging by the uniforms, but I also see police, National Guard, relief organizations and several people I recognize as employees of the city.

The change in lighting throws me for a moment as my eyes adjust. Taking a deep breath I straighten my shoulders and resume my march to the reception desk, dodging between the crowds.I had to fight the urge to yawn, I hadn't slept at all, but I knew what I needed to do and I was here to see it through.

"I need to speak to someone about my daughter." I declared trying to keep my voice reasonable but firm.

The receptionist looks haggard with bags under her eyes, her hair is frazzled and her clothes appear slept in. She shoots a glare at me while continuing to speak into her desk phone. She pointedly glares at me as she holds her conversation. Deciding that picking a fight with the receptionist would be a waste of time I save my frustration and simply stand and meet her glare with my best blank business face. Eventually she finishes and with an explosive sigh finally directs her attention towards me.

"Alright sir, now, how may I help you?" Even as she is speaking to me the woman, Christen according to her name tag, is sorting through paper on her desk.

"Last night my daughter ran away from home." I begin, only to lose myself momentarily in the memory of Taylor storming out into the night, of her slipping away from me. For a moment it washes away my voice. The receptionist's eyes soften, and then she bites at her lip and glances away.

"What's your daughter's name sir?"

"Taylor, Taylor Hebert. H-e-b-e-r-t." Best not to waste any time waiting for them to get the last name wrong. With a quick clatter of keys the receptionist looks over her computer screen. "Well, she wasn't one of the poor unfortunates in the shelter Leviathan broke into." The woman mussed quietly, I almost didn't catch what she had said.

As soon as the words registered I was thrown for a loop remembering once again the conversation from the night before. Taylor saved a shelter from Leviathan, and had her back broken in the process. But why was she…

"Hmm, sir could you please give me a few details about your daughter; hair color, height, things like that?"

"She's tall for her age, 5'10", long curly brown hair, she's thin, about to turn sixteen." I replied without really thinking. If they were going to find Taylor they would need to know what she looked like, but why hadn't she asked for a picture?

A few more moments of tapping away at the keyboard and the woman bit at her lip looking slightly concerned.

"Well the good news is no one matching that description has been added to the casualties list but unfortunately it's too soon for that to be a guarantee of her safety."

"W-what?! No, no, no you don't understand!" I said in a rush. She thought Taylor was dead?! A shiver went down my spine at the thought of my baby girl bleeding out in some dark alley.

"Taylor came home after the attack, I saw her we talked, we got into a fight and she ran away!" The receptionist looked a bit skeptical but finally nodded, while giving me an apologetic look.

"I'm sorry sir, but that's really more of an issue for the police. The PRT is currently in the middle of a crisis as I'm sure you are aware. Everyone is rather busy handling the aftermath of yesterday's Endbringer attack and setting up security for supply convoys."

"I'm aware." I bite out.

"Then you understand that I really can't help you sir."

"Excuse me?! Isn't it your job to help me?"

"To an extent." The woman responded clearly becoming exasperated. "But missing persons reports really are not the purview of the PRT or the Protectorate. I'm sorry sir but if you need to file a missing person's report you'll need to speak to the police and frankly with everything going on…" The woman trailed off seeming to realize she may have said too much. "I'm sorry sir but I'm afraid I really can't help you.

"Ma'am, I assure you that in this particular instance it is most _certainly_ a PRT matter." I grit out. With a tired sight the woman waves to one of the troopers, who I notice starts working his way through the chaos of the lobby towards us.

"Sir, if it hasn't even been twenty four hours then it isn't even a matter for the police, let alone the PRT. While I'm sorry, your domestic troubles are not a matter for the PRT. Now if you would please be so kind as to" I cut the woman off again as my temper starts to wear thin at her attitude. If she has me thrown out I won't be able to help Taylor.

"My daughter is a cape, she fought Leviathan yesterday and saved a group of civilians who were trapped in one of the shelters!" I snapped, but kept my voice down.

Christen actually looked up from the papers she was sorting through staring me dead in the face, most likely trying to determine if I was lying. I stared back unflinching.

"Let's say I believe you for a second. She ran away from home, she has been missing for less than a day, and your daughter is a cape?" I give the woman a curt nod.

"Then what exactly are you worried about sir? If she showed up to the fight odds are she can take care of herself just fine. The name Hebert isn't registered as a relation to any of the current Wards, so you're not her about shadow Stalker or Vista. If your daughter is a new cape you wanted to sign up for the Wards we can work on that but I'm afraid even trying to track down a new cape will be difficult given the current situation."

I winced at the memory of Taylor screaming at me that the PRT would only lock her up.

"That's, actually the reason she ran away. I was pushing for her to join the Wards. I actually planned to bring her in this morning to get this taken care of, but she refused and ran off." I admitted as the trooper finally reached the reception desk.

"Problem, Christen?" The trooper asked as he eyed me up and down while keeping his hand near the extendable baton on his belt.

"Maybe?" Christen half asked. "He claims his daughter fought yesterday, made it home and when he confronted her about joining the Wards she bolted… Mike would you please take Mr. Hebert to conference room six. It's not being used right now. Mr. Hebert I'll pass your claim up the chain, but you have to understand if it turns out you're wasting the PRT's time during the current crisis you may be fined or even arrested, and even if your claim is true it may take quite some time before anyone is free to speak with you."

Nodding curtly to Christen I turned and followed the trooper out of the main lobby.

With a nod the trooper led me across the room and down a hallway to a small room with off white walls and a small table with a few chairs. Taking a seat opposite the door I lean back and wait. This had to work for Taylor's sake for Taylor's future. I had let everything fall apart after Annette's death, but I would make this work, I _would_ fix this. I _had_ to fix this.

They had hurt my _baby_. Armsmaster had strung her along then set her up to be _killed_. No I was going to see this straightened out I was going to see Armsmaster and Shadow Stalker behind bars and my daughter inducted into the Wards. I was going to fix this. I would make everything right. Then Taylor would see. Then she would come home. Then we could be a family again. With every repetition of my new mantra the fire burning in my gut grew in intensity.

I stayed like that for nearly two hours, nibbling on stale donuts and downing cups of crappy instant coffee. All that time repeating my new mantra, and fighting the urge to sleep. When the door finally slid open I jolted upright almost spilling my coffee.

"Mr. Herbert, right?" Asked a tired looking man who appeared to be in his early thirties. His dress shirt and khakis looked slept in.

"Hebert, please call me Danny, Mr.?"

"Jack, I'm one of the people who handle paperwork relating to the Wards, normally you'd be talking to someone else but my superior's handling after action reports and complaints from worried parents of the Wards… well they sent me. Sorry I know as a parent you probably want to go right to the top, but I assure you I'm familiar with all the procedures."

We'll he was right this certainly wasn't what I'd hoped for but I knew full well how bureaucracy could be, and so long as he could help Taylor I didn't really care.

"OK, let's go over the basics." Jack said as he placed some papers on the table and pulled out a pen.

"Your name is Danny Hebert and your Daughter's name is Taylor Hebert?"

I nod.

"You told Christen your daughter showed up and fought against Leviathan yesterday? That takes guts."

"She did." I respond feeling a tug of fear and pride at what Taylor had done.

"And you want her to join the Wards?"

"That's right."

"Alright well before we go any further… Danny where is your daughter? I don't mean to pry it's just that you have to understand the Wards is essentially a job. Part of being a Ward is going on patrols, doing publicity events, and yes catching criminals, particularly in cities like the ours where the gangs have such an overwhelming presence. You can sign her up for the Wards but to be blunt, part of the decision rests with your daughter."

I felt my jaw slacken slightly and a lead weight settle in my stomach. Not even five minutes in and I was already hitting a road block?

"Don't get me wrong there are always exceptions, we can offer her a safe place to practice her control if nothing else. But you have to understand that you've effectively outed your daughter?"

"I… I." I had to swallow a lump in my throat. "I, my daughter needs the Wards. She…" I was having trouble finding the words.

"Danny? You alright?"

"I, Taylor always wanted to be a hero growing up. But, but she's fallen in with the wrong group of people. I, I didn't even know she was a cape until yesterday! The things she's done, the people she's fallen in with! I just need her safe, I need to help her get back on the right track, before, before..." Jack's eyes had grown steadily wider as I talked. Finally the man let out an explosive sigh.

"Fuck. Damn it, this is so high over my pay grade it isn't even funny" Jack said massaging his temples.

"Do you know what you've just done? Do you have any idea how much of a shit storm this is going to be? We don't go looking for the civilian Id's of capes for a reason Danny, because that opens up the Protectorate, Ward's and the PRT for off the clock retaliation. Do understand what I'm saying? We go after your daughter out of costume she, and any teammates she might have, could target our people in their homes. God, this way over my pay grade."

The lead weight in my stomach was turning into a block of ice.

"You have to be able to help her!" I was vaguely aware that I sounded desperate.

"Maybe." Jack shrugged apologetically. "In this situation I don't even know if I'm supposed to ask you her cape ID or not."

I started to open my mouth to tell him, something I'm not even sure what.

"Don't say another word." Jack cut me off with a mild glare. "Look, I get it. You are trying to help your daughter, but if you really want to help her you will wait until someone who knows how to deal with this can get down here and meet with you. I'll let my bosses know. Look if it helps, the city is a powder keg right now with Lung gone and Kaiser dead. Odds are they'll be tripping over themselves for an excuse to take another villain off the board."

With that said Jack got up and quickly made his way out of the room taking the incomplete paperwork with him and punching numbers into his phone.

I settled back into my chair rubbing at my eyes. I was getting help, slowly, painfully slowly.

Fix this. Make everything right. Then she will come home. Then we will be a family again.

The ice in my gut started to melt away. This wasn't the end, this was only a hiccup.

Fix this. Make everything right. Then she will come home. Then we will be a family again.

I was getting help. They would see that Taylor is a good girl who hit a run of bad luck. I could still make this work.

Fix this. Make everything right. Then she will come home. Then we will be a family again.

With a sigh I let the last of my worry slip away and sipped at my now cold cup of coffee. I would wait, as long as needed to see this sorted out. Another couple of hours, more donuts and coffee. Plenty of time for my frustration and worry to build back up to a simmering boil. The door swung open to admit a rather rotund, tired looking woman in a business suit. She had a folder open and she was analyzing it intently, her eyes spoke of endless reserves of determination.

"Daniel Hebert, age forty seven, single father of Taylor Hebert, who will be turning 16 in... two weeks. Your wife died several years ago in a car accident. You are in charge of hiring for the dock workers union." Her eyes flicked up to scrutinize me, and her mouth quirks down into a small frown. "According to what my people tell me, you came in this morning asking about getting help finding your daughter and signing her up for the Wards. This then caused an issue as your daughter is apparently a _villain_."

The woman sat heavily in the chair across from me.

"How did you?"

"Mr. Hebert, you have been in this facility for roughly four hours. Despite how busy we are when the father of a villain comes in and tries to sign them up for the Ward's background checks happen." Her voice dripped hostility. "But that's not what we are here for. I am director Emily Piggot, and I've take the time out of my incredibly busy day to handle this personally. There is a very short list of female villains young enough to be your daughter active here in the bay. One is a neo-nazi, and two are part of a group that made a name for themselves robbing a bank and crashing a fundraiser dinner. Mr. Hebert, what is your daughter's cape name?"

"Skitter. Taylor's cape name is Skitter." And saying that out loud _hurt_. I've known for more than twelve hours. Taylor told me everything in person. Despite that saying it, admitting it out loud made things more real. I had to fix this. I had to bring her home.

"Of course." Piggot said, her frown took on a new life morphing into an all out scowl. "Who else but the city's latest and greatest problem child." I could feel myself bristling at the woman's statements.

"It's hardly my daughter's fault that a hero let her go ahead with the idea of playing undercover agent." I spit out across the table. I wouldn't let this woman ignore the role of her organization in what my daughter had become.

"Armsmaster's mistakes have nothing to do with me, Mr. Hebert. You would do well to remember that. Despite what you may think his idiocy does not absolve your daughter of responsibility for her actions, and let me assure you in her short time as a villain she has amassed a lengthy list of things for which she must be held accountable."

Piggot paused for a moment. In that moment her face became unreadable. Then her face became slightly calmer than before, though there was something about her expression my sleep deprived mind found unsettling. I would not have the chance to think on it though.

"All of which doesn't even begin to touch on the media nightmare your daughter represents. The kind of negative publicity she could possibly bring down on the Protectorate and PRT might destroy the city." She paused. "Of course that's only if she could convince anyone that she is telling the truth. PR was never my specialty but I'm fairly certain we could convince the news to ignore any slanderous reports given by a small time villain."

I glared her down. How dare this woman act like some information was more important than Taylor! How dare she insinuate that my daughter's word, that her suffering, could be brushed aside as lies!

"Now you walk in not a day after what is no doubt the greatest fiasco involving your daughter to date saying that your daughter ran away from home. How long have you known your daughter was a parahuman?"

"I found out last night when she came home from the attack."

"You mean to say she hid her cape activities from you for a bit more than a month?"

"We drifted apart after my wife died, I have not been the best father." But I would do better. That is why I was here; I was going to fix this. I would make them fix this. I would bring Taylor home.

"Why did your daughter run away last night Mr. Hebert?" I took a moment to gather my thoughts before I started to speak around the lump of rage and grief in my throat. In that moment I felt my anger take hold of me as it did from time to time, the way I had always tried to keep Taylor from seeing.

"She came home and told me about everything, how she got her powers, spending months experimenting with them, making her costume. She told me about going out on her first night fighting Lung and meeting Armsmaster, making a deal with him."

As I said the last I made sure to fix the Director with a pointed glare. She returned my glare with one of her own, but there was something else flashing behind her steely eyes. I didn't care though. The woman had sat their making light of my daughter's situation. Well, I would make sure she took it seriously now.

"She told me about fighting Leviathan, she saved almost an entire shelter from that monster, she made it possible for everyone else to track it. She told me Panacea pretended she would be arrested and to escape she ran into the room of the person who caused her trigger event by putting her in the hospital!" I was shouting now, and I realized at some point I had stood up so that I could glare down at the woman in charge of the organization that was standing between me and my little girl, my little owl.

"She told me how the only reason she wasn't forced to give that psychopath, the girl who hospitalized her and caused her to trigger, her civilian identity is because the head of the local Protectorate set her up to be killed by Leviathan!"

I brought my fist down on the table, I was vaguely aware of the fact that I'd split the skin on one of my knuckles and was bleeding. The Director simply stared at me impassively, like she didn't care one lick for a word I'd said and I felt something in me snap.

"One of your Wards, that, that, _Sophia_ bitch, and the _leader_ of the Protectorate are the reason my daughter feels more comfortable with _criminals_ than with her own family! So when I told her we would be coming in today to sign her up for the Wards she insisted she would be arrested on sight and bolted! Now, tell me, how you are going to fix this mess!?" I was flat out screaming now. Even as she continued to stare at me with dead eyes that spoke of nothing more than contempt.

"Mr. Hebert," the woman said, her voice _trying_ to sound compassionate while her eyes still had that dispassionate look. "Making accusations at the top of your lungs will not help things. Now the problem is" I saw red. Accusations? _Accusations?!_ How dare she pretend what my daughter had gone through wasn't real?! That it didn't matter!

"One of your Wards assaulted my daughter! One of your heroes tried to kill her with a fucking Endbringer! And you have the gall to sit there and act like none of this matters! Like my daughter doesn't matter!" I punched the table again as I glared the director down.

She didn't even flinch. She calmly reached for her phone and placed it on the table before pressing a button.

"Corporal Johanson, Private Davis, please activate the noise cancellers on your helmets and come escort Mr. Hebert to one of the solitary cells."

' _If we walk in there all that's going to happen is they lock the two of us up'_ Taylor's words from the night before filtered through my mind.

"Mr. Hebert, you are in possession of knowledge which could endanger a Ward and her family, as well as the Endbringer truce. Under normal circumstances I would have you sign a nondisclosure agreement and then we would launch an investigation into the validity of your daughter's claims. However, given the circumstances it is clear that you cannot be trusted not to act rashly and may disclose that information. Given that is the case, I'm going to have to detain you until I can be sure that this information will not get out."

My blood froze in my veins. She couldn't be serious; this wasn't what I had come here for. This was wrong, there had to be some kind of law against this. Standing, the Director made her way out the door and with a gesture of her fingers, two PRT troopers came in and grabbed me by the arms.

I tried to struggle free, I screamed obscenities at the Director the troopers and anyone else I could think to blame. It did me absolutely no good.

"We will keep your daughters civilian identity from Shadow Stalker in case your daughter's allegations are true." The Director spoke in a bland tone that made it clear exactly what she thought of my daughter 'allegations'. "In the meantime… your daughter has clearly demonstrated willingness to spread extremely sensitive information and will have to bring her in before she creates a disaster." Her piece said the director turned and left as I was dragged away.

As the Director disappeared down a hallway and I was lead away I felt all the fight go out of me, my mind latched onto what Taylor had told me. She was right, she was right about everything. As I was roughly shoved into my cell room I remembered something else.

I'd sworn.

I'd sworn on Annette's grave to not speak about Shadow Stalker's identity, or Armsmasters betrayal of the truce. With that thought running through my mind my knees give out, and I slumped with my back against a wall. Taylor had been right.

{}{}{}{}

Taylor Hebert: day after the attack, approximately 2:30 PM

With a despondent little sigh I poked away at my MRE, crappy tasteless pasta. I'd wandered for a good portion of the night and again this morning, before winding up at one of the camps for those whose homes were destroyed. I felt a little bad taking food that was meant for those who lost their homes, but I justified it with the knowledge that even those whose homes were fine would probably need these for at least a few days while the city was putting itself back together. The government stockpiled them between attacks for a reason after all.

It wasn't like I would be taking up resources for long anyway. I just needed somewhere to lie low for a few days before the Undersiders got together to hash out what we would do next. Besides which I was more than compensating them by keeping the many species of pest insects away from everyone.

I needed a plan. I couldn't fight Coil on my own; I would die, simple as that. With the Undersiders helping me, we might be able to save Dinah, _might_. Though it would still be a long shot with the Travelers, his mercs and his power, whatever it may be, all backed by Dinah's precognitive abilities.

The Protectorate had more capes and resources to bring to bear against Coil, but they were reeling from there losses against Leviathan. Even if I thought the heroes were the way to take down the snake I couldn't fight with them. I wouldn't fight with them, not unless I was sure I could walk away after. Only I was sure I couldn't. There would be no temporary alliances with the heroes. Skitter was an established entity, a villain, someone who had attacked several of them personally, and knows the civilian identity of one of their own. There was no potential for trust there.

Idly I noticed a pair PRT troopers making their way through the refugee camp. They foam guns and body armor a dead give away to my swarm sense. It was not the first pass they had taken through the camp since I'd arrived. I actually appreciated what they were doing to keep people calm, showing their presence was a small thing but it did a lot of good for people's nerves in the aftermath of the attack.

The Black Company would be able to get to Coil. There was no question of that, they were known for picking off members of the Nine, and gutting whole criminal organizations on the rare occasions such groups pushed too far and lost the protection of the unwritten rules. The problem was no matter how good they might be they likely would not go after Coil just to help me fix my mistakes.

So my only real chance of helping Dinah was the Undersiders. Playing out the odds of being taken back by them... not the best. Lisa would take me back, Brian might, Alec was impossible to predict. But Rachel felt betrayed. She could barely bring herself to give strangers a chance to earn her trust. Giving a second chance to someone who betrayed her trust once already… I wasn't sure that was even possible for her. With a depressed sigh I speared another chunk of my meal.

"Taylor Hebert?" With a start I jerked upright. The man addressing me was a brunette in his late twenties or early thirties. He wore plain jeans and brown boots, but what really grabbed my attention was the jacket he wore. PRT was embossed brightly in the upper left corner in white. For a moment, just a moment I felt panic gripping at me, and then I pushed the sensation aside I couldn't afford panic. Though I could start marshalling my forces, with a thought the bugs in my range started to move. Some came my way to stand ready while others spread out to check for any other PRT members I may not have noticed.

"Yes. Can I help you, officer…."

"Walker, James Walker. And I'm rather more here to help you." Warning bells started going off in my mind.

I had trusted Legend with my real name and face. I doubt he would go out of his way to betray me. He hadn't exactly given me any reason to trust the Protectorate or PRT but at least he seemed to wish I could have trusted them. But to break the unwritten rules by reaching out to me in my civilian life, the day after an Endbringer attack? No. Legend would not have done this, but maybe he shared my name, my story, with someone. The director? If she knew the Undersiders and I were on the outs… Maybe.

Maybe someone had noticed the bugs were leaving people alone so the PRT had gotten a call and they decided putting me on the spot, away from any kind of support, would let them push me into the Wards? Were they afraid I was a threat to the Civilians and reaching out before things could go bad? Maybe someone had just checked my address versus a list of destroyed neighborhoods and wanted to tell me the house survived? Something was going on and maybe I'm just a cynic at heart, but I didn't think it would be good.

"Oh? I think I'm doing alright all things considered officer." I responded trying to keep my voice level. I'd just have to play dumb.

"Yes, well, your father seems to disagree."

I froze, and for a single moment my swarm froze with me. Dad went to the PRT. After everything I told him he went to the PRT. They knew my identity. Dad had outed me to the PRT. Dad walked up to them and gave them my identity! The moment passed and I had to fight to keep both my emotions and swarm under control. I could feel my bugs reacting; wanting to move and give voice to the emotions. I tightened my control over them. I could be wrong. Unlikely but I could be, and I wouldn't risk outing myself if I I didn't have to fight with my anger, because it was brushed aside by icy fear as a thought struck me. What else had he told them? I took a deep breath. I'd just play stupid, can't confirm anything for them. Can't play into a trap.

"Dad talked to you, huh?" James shook his head.

"Not me personally, but he spoke with several people including the director." I cursed mentally and immersed myself in my swarm briefly to try and regain some of my equilibrium.

"I wasn't aware runaways fell under the purview of the PRT. Really more of a problem for the police, and with the way the city is right now I'm surprised anyone has time for this sort of thing."

"Well, you signed in when you got here to be added to the survivors list. That made you a bit easier to find." His smile was rather disarming, but his sidestepping the question was working against him.

"That tells me how you found me. Not why you bothered with everything else going on, or how you plan to help me."

"Well, the PRT would like to help you and your father reconcile your difference." He hedged.

"Right, let me stop you right there. Our differences are our business. I don't want your help with them. My Dad needs to understand that he's wrong. Period. End of discussion. This isn't about compromises or middle ground, and it sure as hell isn't the business of the PRT."

"Your father disagrees."

"Let him."

"The PRT disagrees."

"To bad. I'm a teenage girl who left home in the after what might as well be a natural disaster. I'm outside your jurisdiction. You want to call the cops on me you go right ahead, but you can't detain me, and I'll be gone before they get here." James was frowning. I wasn't entirely sure he couldn't detain me but that was fine. If he knew, or suspected, who I was he wouldn't risk trying it on his own anyway.

"Well, Taylor, you father seemed to be under the impression that you did in fact fall under our jurisdiction."

"So, what? He told you I'm part of a gang or something? And you believed him? I ran away from home. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd told you I was undercover in the Merchants for the Empire if he thought it would get you to help." I took a moment to glance around the tent looking for easy exits. There was a fair sized gap around me at the moment. I guess people try to give the PRT their space, that and my bugs told me most of the camp was still in line for food.

"No. He had a rather more interesting story to tell. He seemed to be under the impression that you are a cape."

"Oh is that right?" I scowled at the James. "So the PRT decided to send a recruiter after me on the off chance my Dad wasn't just saying shit to get you to help?" With a sigh James looked me in the eyes and he seemed nothing so much as tired.

"Let's cut the bullshit." James took a quick glance around to confirm no one was close enough to overhear us. "Your father came in this morning and tried to sign you up for the Wards. At some point during that process he admitted that you had been active for about a month and fought against Leviathan yesterday. He told the Director that you go by Skitter in costume." My hands clenched tight in my lap and my swarm surged forward and back in a million small tides hidden just out of sight.

"Given the current state of emergency it took a bit more than just that claim to get any action. I can tell you right now, sending a negotiator to talk to a villain out of costume is… well it's a very rare occurrence. It's exclusively done with young teens whose parents find out they've joined a gang and come to us for help. Nationally we have only done this about a dozen times." Ahh so that's their game; a little known loophole in the unwritten rules the PRT uses to try and reach out to 'troubled teens'.

"It ever actually work, talking to a villain out of costume?"

"Most give up when they realize they don't have a secret identity anymore…" Of course they did, and the rest ran or lashed out.

"Uh huh, what exactly did my Dad tell the PRT to convince them I am who he says I am?"

"I don't know. He only told the Director, and she isn't sharing, but it would have needed to be fairly conclusive evidence."

Like knowing things he couldn't possibly know. Like knowing Shadow Stalkers is Sophia Hess. Like knowing that Arsmaster tried to get me killed by Leviathan. I felt a chill run down my spine. He had sworn on Mom's grave that he would not talk about either of those things. Could it be something else? Like the fact I'd been the one to take down Lung both times? Almost no one knew that, unless Armsmaster had admitted to taking the credit for the first takedown since yesterday. I wasn't even sure the PRT knew. Though it would have been easy enough to confirm with him.

Was it worth keeping up the charade that I wasn't Skitter? Probably not. Whatever he had told them was enough to convince them. Playing dumb wasn't about to convince them otherwise. Still, something about this wasn't right. I scanned the crowds for any other troopers of capes but found nothing obvious. Well nothing inside the camp. Outside the camp I found a van with a full squad of troopers, as well as a pair of capes. Kid win was easily identified from where he sat on his hoverboard but the other was harder to guess at. Either Assault or Velocity based on the costume. Considering Battery was nowhere to be seen it was most likely Velocity. OK, nothing I couldn't get passed if I was careful. I started drawing insects in towards the heroes, and myself.

"Fine then. Dad ignored everything I told him and went to sign me up for the Wards. Now you and the others are here to arrest me is that right?" The group laying in weight outside the camp all tensed. So James was wearing a wire. Not a big surprise all things considered.

"Hello Kid Win, Velocity. Not to sound arrogant but does the PRT really expect the two of you and a single squad to be enough to take me down?" James surprisingly managed to stay cool and calm in the face of my declaration. Guess there was a reason they sent him to negotiate with villains.

"Please, Taylor, your father's waiting for you back at the base. We just want you to come in so we can work something out." Dad was still at the PRT? Is waiting for me? Is he in lock up? Are they trying to hold him over my head? "You fought against Leviathan yesterday, given that the PRT and Protectorate are more than willing to offer you a place in the Wards as a probationary member." A probationary member, just like Shadow Stalker. She was still a member, who might try to kill me and who would absolutely make my life hell. No doubt what they would offer me would come with a million strings attached that they could bind me up in, or use as an excuse to throw me in jail. "If you'll just come in peacefully we can work out the details."

The PRT are here to collect me, because Dad had gone to them looking for help and he had said too much. He had given them my identity, and possibly a lot more. Now they were here too bring me in. They were asking me to come in peacefully, but they had a pair of capes and a squad of troopers waiting outside the camp. Why? In case I lashed out and started attacking people? Where they there to bring me in by force if I refused to leave peacefully? No. They wouldn't want to start a fight in a refugee camp, someone would get hurt.

"To be perfectly honest, I don't see any reason to go with you." I said carefully.

"Taylor, Legend didn't give us your identity but he did leave us with a brief summary of what you told him. The allegations that Shadow Stalker was responsible for your trigger event, that you were working undercover against the Undersiders, and that you and your team had a falling out even before that fact came to light. It's not too late to turn over that new leaf, Taylor. You can still be a hero." My anger spiked.

"How the hell can you even say that with a straight face?" I hissed. "I've nearly died, not once, but twice because of people who are supposed to be heroes! Armsmaster…" I trailed off. "No, I'm not getting into this. I'm not spreading what I know and giving you bastards any more reason to come after me. If I go back with you all I'll get are a cell and a prison uniform. Even if I did believe the offer to let me join... I won't be part of any organization that calls Stalker a hero. That psycho belongs behind bars, or a mental hospital, whichever."

"Taylor, please your father"

"You have a phone?" I cut him off.

"Well, yes, but."

"Good, put me on with your boss. I want to talk to my Dad." Reluctantly James stepped back to place a call while I kept careful track of Kid Win, Velocity and the troopers. Almost a minute later I took the phone from James.

"Dad?"

"I'm sorry Miss. Hebert, but I'm afraid your father is unavailable."

"Who is this?"

"I am director Emily Piggot. Ms. Hebert, it would be in your best interests if" I hung up on her. They wouldn't let me talk to Dad but the Director of the PRT had the time to take my call in the middle of everything else that was going on? No way, it did not add up. The phone rang taking me by surprise but I accepted the call.

"Miss. Hebert do not hang up on me." The Director seethed. I was tempted to hang up on her again, but stopped short of hitting the end call button.

"What exactly did my dad tell you director? Why can't I talk to him?"

"Miss Hebert, what your father told me has no bearing on"

"Cut the bullshit. What did he tell you, and why don't you want me talking to him?" For a moment the line fell silent.

"When I spoke with your father he quickly fell into a rage and started shouting. He claimed Shadow Stalker was responsible for hospitalizing you, which caused your trigger event. He was aware of Armsmaster's actions during the Endbringer battle yesterday, his highly classified actions." My stomach was tying itself up in knots and I was vaguely aware that the phone was shaking in my grip. "I have no choice but to detain him until he calms down enough to sign, and be expected to not break, a nondisclosure agreement."

That bastard. He ignored everything I told him. He outed me to the PRT. He got himself arrested trying to play super dad. As if all that wasn't enough, he broke his promise to me. He swore to me on _Mom's grave_ that he would not talk about that with anyone! Yet the very next day he went and waved that same highly classified information in the face of the PRT.

"Miss. Hebert, you need to come in and" I hung up on her again. Fuck what she thought I needed.

I started dialing.

"Taylor?" James asked clearly unsure what was going on. I waved him off.

"Hello?" Lisa's familiar voice was a soothing reassurance in the middle of this insanity.

"It's Taylor. The PRT know who I am, my Dad told them. They're trying to bring me in without a fight."

"Fuck." Lisa breathed out. It was an apt summary.

"Lisa, Dina still needs help. I can't do that on my own. I'm not going to work for the Protectorate, I can't, I won't. Would the Undersiders help me get her out. Can I, if I went back to work for the boss could I, would he…" I was rambling. It was all getting to be too much.

"Taylor, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. He isn't going to let her go. She's too valuable to him, and I, I don't think you'll be able to get back into the Undersiders." I could feel my mouth going dry.

"Why?"

"You saw what Coil did to Dinah. If he ever thought I was becoming more trouble than I'm worth he would have done the same thing to me. Taylor, he scares the shit out of me. I tried to get the Company to go after him for me, but they don't take contracts from villains inside any country they have an agreement with... So I took them up on Lady's offer I joined the Company. I'm sorry. I had to get out from under his finger and I just"

"Lisa," I cut her off, and swallowed a lump in my throat. "I get it. I don't blame you."

But without Lisa it my odds of getting back into the Undersiders were a lot worse. Bitch would never go for it. Brian certainly wouldn't be in a rush to trust me again. There was no way to predict what Alec might do. Was there even any point in joining them again if I couldn't help Dinah anyway? No, not really.

" _Everyone in the company is like that, even the non-capes. It's a statement."_ The memory of Lisa's words from the Day before washed over me. _"The Black Company is made up of people who left their old lives behind. No family and no friends outside of the Company."_ That's what she had chosen to do. Leave everything behind to escape a madman, escape her past. _"Everyone from their past life they leave behind, either dead, an enemy, or just left behind. They change their names to escape the past, and they show their faces because there isn't anyone for their enemies to go after for leverage."_

And in that moment, right then, that sounded, _good_.

" _Taylor, The Company wants you. I can't promise we'll solve all your problems but I can promise that the company is family"_ Lady hadn't sugarcoated things. She had offered me a place without twisting my arm into it, without bullshit power plays or conditions and stipulations. She had been honest with me, and if I was being honest with myself, part of me wanted what she was offering.

"Lisa," I was surprised how calm I sounded. "Tell your new bosses I'm taking them up on their offer. I'm at the refugee camp on the east side of town. Can they pick me up?"

"I, you're sure?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm sure. Not like I have anywhere else to go at this point." For a few minutes the line was quiet.

"They'll be there in five. Keep an eye on the sky. I'll see you soon, Taylor."

"See you soon, Lisa." I ended the call. I tossed the phone back to James and slung my bag over my shoulder.

"Alright, I'm leaving. Walk with me there are some things we need to discuss before I go."

"Wait, what? Miss Hebert!"

"Save it. I just took up another job offer and you need to be able to tell your bosses everything I'm willing to share about the Undersiders." I say as I stand and with calm even steps start working my way towards the edge of the camp, James kept pace though judging by the look on his face he wasn't too happy about what I was doing.

"The Undersiders are working for Coil. He has some kind of power that lets him mess with probability not sure exactly what it does though. Most of his organization is made up of mercenaries but he also has the Undersiders and the Travelers working for him." The look of shock on James's face was actually fairly amusing. Feeling Kid Win almost fall off of his hoverboard was even better.

"I don't know what he's offering the Travelers as payment but he has all of the Undersiders under his thumb in one way or another." I paused for a minute as we worked our way around several group of civilians.

"In addition to the two teams of capes and whatever his own power may be Coil has a precog. Her name is Dinah Alcott. She's incredibly powerful, she can predict the probability of what will happen past three decimal points. He kidnapped her while the Undersiders pulled the bank job which distracted the authorities. Now he has her addicted to some kind of drug and uses her to answer his questions. None of us knew about any of that until yesterday, just a few hours before the attack. That was my initial falling out with the Undersiders. I couldn't be part of that…" I trailed off getting lost in my regrets.

"I can't save her on my own. Coil has some kind of leverage over everyone in the Undersiders so they won't act against him. I won't work for the Protectorate, even to save her, I just can't trust any of you. But I can and will trust you to go all out to save the mayor's niece who happens to be an insanely powerful cape because it would be a win for you. I might not be able to save her so you _heroes_ will have to do it." James was clearly having a hard time with all of this. It was a good thing he was wearing a wire or I would worry about this not all getting back to the director.

We exited the camp and the troopers snapped up their foam sprayers to focus on me but I just ignored them. Kid Win and Velocity both stared at me with their mouths hanging open. I ignored them too. Looking up I saw what could only be described as a cross between a landing craft and a flying carpet. For the most part it looked like a flat bottomed boat but the bottom is lit up with tiny glowing patterns that reminded me of a persian rug I had once seen. It settled silently onto the grass in front of us and its ramp lowered to show several men in dressed in the Company's standard uniform of black and grey military gear. As I climbed up the ramp I turned to address the group one last time.

"Oh and one last thing, Coil has people inside the PRT who feed him information. Good luck with that." My last parting shot fired I went and leaned up against the edge of the strange craft and closed my eyes.

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Read and Review folks. Let me know what you think.


	7. 1-6

AN: Sorry this should have been done sooner but Brain and Aisha were murder on my muse.

So I know I have at least one reader who hasn't read worm and is here only for the Black Company, and I'm sure there are plenty of you who have read worm but not the Black Company. I've been toying with the idea of adding a rundown of both series and the important characters to the beginning of the fic. Is that something people would be interested in?

Also this is the last post of arc one. The initial wave of recruit's have been gathered, the dust from the attack is starting to settle and we can now safely move on to the next crisis. With only a small time skip... and maybe one flashback... not sure yet trying to get in Carol's mind is a bitch.

Don't forget to leave a review! Your feedback is what helps me improve!

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1.6

Taylor

Numb, I feel numb. The thought came sluggishly. It had all been too much too fast I mused. Dinah, the Undersider's reactions, Leviathan, Sophia, Armsmaster, Dad. Too much, too fast. Still, I'd done what I could. The PRT couldn't ignore the intel on Dinah, they would have to act. Being a hero just wasn't an option any more. I wouldn't be a villain again. I couldn't even just be Taylor Hebert again, not that I would want to be. Fucking Da-Danny. Fucking, Danny.

Glancing over the edge of the strange boat I got a clear view of the bay spread out beneath us smack in the middle of it all was a plane of monstrous proportions. The triangular design was a far cry from the usual pencil shaped aircraft one would normally see. It was more like one of the stealth bombers you see in earth aleph movies. I vaguely remembered Mr. Gladly explaining that money for similar projects in our world had their funding cut to pay for all the emergency situations caused by capes and Endbringers.

"Impressive, isn't it?" I thought about answering but decided to just settle for a nod. "Lady has some complicated name for the damn thing, but most of us just call it the Skywhale. Was a lot more impressive when we still had the other two, back before the taken blew them out of the sky." The man's voice took on a harsher edge at the mention of the taken. Glancing over I took in his appearance. Late twenties to mid-thirties, close cropped red hair, and blue eyes. His uniform sported a trio of stripes on the sleeve and a pair of crossed rifles on his collar.

"Name's Elmo, kid."

"Taylor, guess that'll be changing soon though." Elmo just hummed agreeably as we started to descend towards a hangar built into the rear of the Skywhale.

"Lady said you'd come around if we waited." I glanced up sharply. "Don't get jumpy on me. Lady's been around, ruled a chunk of Africa, kept it peaceful, played general in a war, fought in the trenches, been halfway around the world and back fighting with us. She just knows what makes people tick." I let myself relax a bit.

"The thing is, she expected it to take a week or two, and she only gave it a fifty fifty chance…" Elmo trailed off.

"So what happened?" I filled in the end of the sentence for him.

For a moment I thought about telling him, explaining how I was out of options, that Da-Danny had stabbed me in the back. But I hesitated. Did I want them to know? Did I want my history to follow me? No. No, I really didn't. I wanted to leave all of this behind me. I wanted to start over.

"Doesn't really matter now." I finally answered. Elmo gave me a searching look for a moment before nodding.

"Yeah. I think you'll fit in just fine."

{}{}{}{}

Aisha

I giddily bounced on one of Brian's couches cackling at the look of complete confusion on my brother's face. I'd been holding back the effects of my powers at intervals just long enough to piss him off and then letting them take over again. Watching Brian go from pissed to confused and not even remembering what I'd done to piss him off was just so damn funny!

But I'd had my fun I suppose, time to actually let Brian know what was going on. I mean I'd already tried twice but I'd either jumped the gun with letting my power work again or I hadn't shut it down again fast enough, something like that. Of course the failed attempts just led to more abuse of my power for comedic effect. Slipping behind him I wrestled my power back under control.

"Sup, Brian?!" I shouted putting as much cheer into it as I could. The resulting two-foot jump was great.

"Aisha, What the hell?!" I giggled a bit.

"So bro, guess what?"

"You decided that trying to giving me a heart attack after an Endbringer attack is somehow funny?" Brian replied acidly. That sort of killed my happy feeling, so I punched Brian in the arm for guilt tripping me.

"Nooo, I have powers." I singsonged. Brian, for the third time that day froze up before launching into an attempt to check every inch of me for injuries while bombarding me with questions about whether or not I was alright. I sort of tuned it out and gave him one word answers for the next few minutes. I know he meant well but it had been annoying the first time. The fact that this was my third go around was not helping.

"Brian, seriously I'm alright." I said shoving him back a step. "Don't you dare forget this song and dance now that I sat through the whole thing finally either, I am not listening to it again."

"Aisha, what are you talking about?" Groaning I drop back onto one of Brian's couches, resting my feet on the armrest.

"My power, bro. It makes people not notice me, makes them forget I'm there. I'm like, the unknowable girl or something!" I said giving my wrist a little twirl through the air while I smirked. Brian seemed entirely unimpressed and skeptical.

"Oh come on you have to believe me." I whined. "I've already tried to prove it to you twice! I do not want to start over again!" It was hard enough to make him listen to me normally, trying to get him to listen while mixing in my power was quickly becoming frustrating. "Look how else do you explain me getting in here and catching you by surprise?"

Brian faltered for a moment his mouth opening to respond before closing again quickly. A look of confused contemplation settling over his normally serious face. I turned resting my feet on top of the couch and letting my head hang down towards the floor, which just so happened to hide my face, and grin, from Brian.

"Look, if you don't believe me check your back pockets" I couldn't quite fight off the snicker at the end of my sentence. After the second time Brian had challenged me to demonstrate my power had failed I'd used one of my following pranking runs to stick a pair of note in his back pockets.

"Cute, Aisha, real cute." Brian said dryly.

"What? It's true. My power is way better than your crappy power." I said adjusting myself so I could shoot Brian a cheeky grin. Brain just groaned and collapsed into a chair massaging his temples.

"Fucking hell." Brain groused without looking up, causing a frown to flash across my face. "Do you realize how much more complicated you've just made things?" Brian asked the carpet. I know the question was aimed at me, I also know he doesn't really want me to answer. If the million other times he had done the same thing weren't enough to give that away, the fact he wasn't even looking at me was a decent clue.

"Oh I dunno bro, I figure this is a great opportunity for some family bonding, and sticking it to the man." I said rolling my eyes. Brian just groaned and continued on as if I hadn't said a word.

"I know you, there's no way you won't use your powers, that's not even an option." Brian mumbled as he stood and started to pace. He failed to notice that my eyes nearly bugged out at the idea he would even consider I not use my power to help him. "The Hero's aren't an option. That would put too much scrutiny on me. Not to mention the bastards just can't be trusted." Brian spat with venom. I was now legitimately pissed that he didn't seem to want me on his team. I was also more than a little curious about why he seemed so pissed at the law all of a sudden. Normally he only talked about Shadow Stalker like that.

"There really is no other choice, you'll have to join the Undersiders." Brain continued still really speaking to himself more than to me as he paced. Finally, he turned to face me as if he hadn't just been talking like I wasn't there listening. "Aisha, if you're going to be a part of the team were going to need to go over a lot of ground rules… I'd better talk to Tattletale and see what she thinks about all of this. She's had the most contact with the boss, she'll have a better idea about bringing you onboard, not to mention I need to talk to her about Skitter."

"Oh yeah how's bug girl doing?" I jumped at the change of topic. Anything to avoid a lecture on the ground rules of being a villain. Brian's grimace was not reassuring.

"That's, complicated." Brian hedged, as he pulled out a phone and started to dial, I just glared. "Tattletale, listen I know we were going to give things another couple of days to settle but there's been a new development." Brian fell silent.

"What do you mean you can't help?"

"You did WHAT?!" Brian shouted, face contorting into outrage.

"No… Lisa, you can't… So we deal with it! We work together as a team to find a solution! You don't just run off to join a bunch of mercenaries!" Oh wow, when that girl cut ties she didn't do it by half measures.

"Skitter, joined too? Why? Why would she do something like that? It's not her at all." Brian looked like someone had just slapped him. "Her Dad outed her... Son of a bitch." Brain collapsed into a nearby chair. "Lisa, no, Lisa I need your help I… No, Lisa don't hang up on me damn it I" Brian stopped talking and simply stayed frozen for a few moments before slamming his cell phone down onto a nearby coffee table.

I stopped holding my power back, letting it loose as I slipped out of the room, making my way to the streets below. This was interesting and all, but I wasn't going to get the story out of Brian right now so I might as well wander the streets for a while until Brian was willing to explain everything. Besides, it'd be a lot more fun to mess with people than listen to Brian attempting to put together a plan.

Looking up and down the flooded street I had to cackle at the idea of tripping nazi's and drawing the Jewish Star on their bathroom mirrors in permanent marker.

{}{}{}{}

Chris (Kid Win)

I slammed my helmet down onto the workbench and finished slipping out of my armor before throwing on some civilian clothes. Making my way into the common room I grabbed a soda from the community fridge before slamming the door shut. It was all so much bullshit!

"Chris, you alright?" Missy's head asked as it poked out of seemingly nowhere. Glancing up from my drink I realized I had gotten the attention of the few people not out on patrol. Missy and Dennis.

"You two hear about Skitter's Dad?" The pair exchanged confused looks.

"No, must have missed that one, what happened." Dennis asked cautiously. No big surprise there ever since the Undersiders bank robbery he was justifiably terrified of the girl. Who wouldn't be after having bugs shoved in their mouth nose and ears, not to mention buried alive in the damn creepy crawlies.

"Her Dad walked in here this morning, bold as brass, and tried to sign her up for the Wards." Dennis paled and Missy inhaled sharply. "Thing is she doesn't trust heroes for some reason. She actually claims that our people have nearly killed her, twice." I chugged half the can of soda.

"Bullshit, that can't be true." Missy said recovering first.

"Then why is Armsmaster on suspension?" I'd had a twenty-minute flight back to base to mull over everything I knew about Skitter and her interactions with us and the Protectorate. Over everything she had said, things were not adding up. I was missing some information, and no matter how I looked at it I just couldn't figure out what Skitter was thinking.

"Anyway that's not the point, guess what Piggot decided to do when Skitter's civilian ID dropped into her lap?"

"Oh fuck. She didn't launch an assault did she? We do not need the Endbringer truce falling apart right now." Dennis said slumping into a chair.

"No, but not much better either. She sent in one of the PRT negotiators to try and talk her into joining up."

"Wait, we can do that?!" Missy shouted as she grabbed her own soda from across the room.

"Apparently but only in certain situations."

"So what happened." Dennis asked.

"That's when she said she wouldn't work with us because she couldn't trust us, and that heroes had almost killed her." The other half of my soda joined the first and I pulled out a second. "I don't know if it's true or not but she sure as hell seemed to believe it."

"How can you be sure." Missy asked skeptically. I just waved the question off, it was only my impression.

"She talked on the phone with the Director, wanted to talk to her Dad and the director wouldn't let her so she hung up and called Tattletale." Missy nearly did a spit take at the idea of anyone hanging up on the director and it actually managed to get a chuckle out of Dennis. "Dunno what those two talked about exactly it was sort of half sentences but she mentioned something about taking someone up on a job. Then she starts spilling info on the Undersiders."

"Wait, what?" Missy Interjected this time. Honestly I was getting fed up with the interruptions but it was to be expected I guess. It was a distraction from yesterday, from our losses. Could I really be surprised they would latch onto it like a lifeline? Groaning I took a few swigs of my new soda.

"Coil, he's got some kind of probability manipulation power, he's backing the Undersiders, and it gets better apparently he's got something over all of them and the Travelers are in town on his payroll."

"Shit." Dennis breathed out.

"It gets better. You know how Rory has been panicking about his younger cousin getting kidnapped? Coil has her, and she's apparently an insanely powerful precog. Coil's got her drugged up and is using her as his personal fortune teller." For a moment the room fell silent.

"Fuck!" Missy cursed kicking a couch repeatedly. I could only nod.

"Skitter wanted to get her out, apparently it was way over the line for her, but she didn't have the firepower so she pushed the job onto our plates."

"If she has a problem with it why didn't she join and help us get Dinah out?" Dennis asked befuddled look on his face.

"Said she couldn't trust us. Remember she's convinced we've nearly killed her?" I asked sarcastically. For a few minutes' no one spoke and I just worked my way through the second soda.

"So what happened?" Dennis finally asked breaking the silence. "She didn't want to join us, sounds like she got a moral objection to working for Coil. Her Civilian ID is blown… So what's she doing now, where'd she go?" I finished off the last of my soda, crushed it in my fist and chucked it into the recycling bin.

"She joined the Black Company, she's not our problem anymore."

{}{}{}{}

Silent (senior member of the Black Company, Cape)

I couldn't help but smirk as I leaned against the wall of the small room and continued my stare down with the moron Coil had sent to infiltrate the Company. Honestly Coil had to be an idiot to even try, but I suppose losing two of his most useful assets at once could push a man to try stupid shit.

Raven stood leaned against a different wall cleaning his already immaculate nails with a particularly nasty looking dagger with a wicked curve to it. Contemplating the poor son of a bitch Coil had sent to us I had to admit he was holding together admirably. Still I could see the signs, we were getting to him. You could see it in the set of his jaw and the way his hands kept drifting towards his hip where he was no doubt missing the weight of a handgun, or knife. I gave a soundless chuckle at the man's discomfort.

There were moments I missed being able to make noise but times like this were not among them. Being completely silent can wreak havoc on the mind of people you're trying to intimidate.

I like to start things off small, just drumming my fingers. Most people are not aware enough to realize that it's not making any noise but they pick up on it subconsciously. It nags at them leaving them feeling unsettled. Then I'd start to pace, that was usually when people picked up on the lack of sound.

I could feel my grin growing as my thoughts were drawn to several past interrogations. The ones who realized I'm a cape are great but even better is when I'm dealing with superstitious nutters out in the ass end of nowhere, places that haven't heard anything about capes or Endbringers. Or sometimes they've heard and blame all of it on witchcraft and demons. God, that one woman had tried to exorcise me thinking I was possessed! Peels of silent laughter burst from my throat at the memory further unnerving Coil's little spy.

The door swinging open to admit the scowling Lieutenant. Almost had the poor bastard jumping out of his seat. Raven kept up his scowling expression but I had no issues with cackling, after all, it just made me seem creepier.

"So, Jet, was it?" The Lieutenant said as he planted himself in the one seat across from our little spy. "What makes you want to join the Company." The Lieutenant said straight faced.

"Seems like a good idea." The merc responded. He might not be too bad at staying composed under pressure but either the man was a shit actor or he didn't have a clue what the Company looked for in a brother. Probably both, most military training never really touched on how damn useful a skill acting can be, more a spec ops thing I guess. Joining the Company is a shit idea for anyone other than people with their backs against the wall and no good choices.

"Uh huh. Listen jackass, this has been cute and all, but really you're wasting our time." The Lieutenant spoke levelly and without rancor.

"Excuse me?" The guy was starting to get twitchy it was really kind of amusing.

"You're a soldier or an ex-soldier. You've got the walk, and the build, and the look. Normally we'd jump at the chance to get someone who we don't have to train from the ground up. But a few things aren't adding up. You're clean shaven, well fed, in good shape, you're well off. No one comes to us if their doing well unless they're a combat junkie, but you don't have that look either, no you're too professional. So you're a merc, like us but without any of our class." I chuckled lightly. Watching the Lieutenant work could be _ever_ so amusing.

"But therein lies our problem. See in this town there's only one guy who pays to keep people like you around, and we just nabbed two of his best people out from under him. Then the next day you walk up to some of our boys in a bar looking to join up?" The Lieutenant shook his head. "They boys knew you were trouble before they even brought you in here." 'Jet's' face had grown steadily paler throughout the conversation.

"Now listen, I'm just"

"Save it." The Lieutenant snapped. "You came in here to capture or kill one or both of our newest sisters. Let me clue you in asshole we protect our own and they are _ours_ now. You tell that to your prick of an employer for us when you come to. Silent, deal with this little shit."

The man tried to bolt around the table at us, where he thought he was going was beyond me but I just did my job and clapped a hand down on his shoulder as he tried to rush past. He tumbled to the floor fast asleep, nothing would be able to wake the bastard up for hours. I never got tired of watching that.

"You know what to do Silent. Drop him off on the docks when you finish." The Lieutenant said as he and Raven made their way out the door.

Pulling out a knife I slit the back of his shirt vertically exposing his back. With a grin I whipped out a little something I'd made out of a coat hanger, and my lighter. Heating the end, I shoved it against the small of his back. The smell of burning flesh tugged a small grin out of me, the son of a bitch would regret messing with us after this. Pulling the brand away revealed the image of a decapitated snake now burnt between his shoulder blades. Let Coil suck on that message.

Chuckling I threw the dumbass over my shoulder and made for the hanger.


	8. 2-1

AN: Still do not own Worm or Chronicles of the Black Company. Most of this post is an edited version of Worm interlude 11f. I'm not happy with the fact that I'm taking 3k words from canon, _**before**_ edits. I take a lot of pride in watching the word count off my fics rise and knowing that it's _my_ work, but in this particular instance editing canon to fit my needs makes a lot more sense than starting from scratch. Regardless, here we go ladies and gentleman, things are about to get hectic! Remember to leave a review!

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2.1

Dinah Alcott

"Odds of successfully recovering Tattletale without inciting retaliation from the Black Company?"

"Seven point three seven two percent."

"Chance of killing Tattletale without inciting retaliation from the Black Company?"

"Five point eight six four percent."

"Chance of my operations surviving conflict with the Black Company?"

"Ten point five eight seven percent."

Coil sighed in exasperation.

"It would seem I'll need to give up on the girls. Truly a shame."

The plural was confusing but I ignored it assuming it had something to do with Coil's power.

Coil stood and paced.

"Chance of the Company attacking me if I do not try to recover, or kill, Tattletale or Skitter?"

"Three point eight six percent."

"Chance of the Protectorate attacking my bases or myself within the next month?"

"Twenty point zero five."

"...What?"

"Twenty point zero five?"

"That can't be correct." He mumbled. "Skitter told them I'm employing the Undersiders, and Travelers. They know I have you pet; they know I have informants within the PRT… So why are the odds so low?"

Coil paces once more, occasionally shaking his head.

If each of the tens of trillions of universes were like pictures, then they were organized into a mosaic, constantly rearranging itself and shuffling. Taken in as a whole, it was a muddle. Depending on how it shuffled, sometimes patterns emerged. A predominant color, perhaps, or lots of scenes that were blurs of motion and activity.

But there was more to it. There were faint sounds, for one thing, and they weren't just two-dimensional. Just the opposite – they were each a fully realized world, and each was continuous, like a slideshow or film reel that extended vast distances forward and backward from any of the scenes of focus. Things got even more complicated when each of the slideshow reels forked out and branched as they moved further away. The only thing stopping them were the terminus points. The first terminus wasn't complicated. The now, the present. It moved inexorably, steadily forward, consuming the individual realities as they ceased to be the _future_ and became the _now_.

The other terminus was somewhat more ominous. Every branch ended at some point, some sooner than others.

I knew that those branches were ones where I died. Right now, there were a lot of them, more coming into view with every passing second. Almost all of the images in the mosaic were either black or crimson. Either the lights were on and everything was covered in blood, or they were off, and she was effectively blind.

I concentrated, and the mosaic organized into two portions, one slightly larger than the other. In one half, that death-terminus came very soon. In the other, it was some distance off. She judged the size of the individual parts, and the number snapped into her head.

 _53.03485192746307955659 percent chance I would die in the next thirty minutes_. The chance was steadily ticking upward with each passing second, with possible realities becoming impossible and fading from view, or being replaced with other possibilities, effectively shifting over to the other side.

"Coil?"

His pacing stopped abruptly.

"What is it, pet?"

"Fifty-three point two zero three eight three percent chance I die in the next half-hour."

"How?"

"Blood or darkness. Don't know."

"The chance _I_ die in the next thirty minutes?"

I thought, and felt the mosaic shift into a new configuration. Coil's face predominated each tiny scene, active, speaking and alive in some, unmoving or dead in the others. "Fifty-four point seven zero nine percent for the worlds where I don't die. Don't know about the worlds where I'd die first."

"And, say, Mr. Pitter? The chance he dies?"

"Fifty point-" I stopped as Coil raised a hand.

"So whatever it is, it happens here, and involves everyone here. Chance of survival if we leave?"

"Ten point six six four-"

"No. Chance the average person in the city lives if we leave?"

"Ninety-nine point-"

"So we're targets. It's not an attack on the city. If we mobilize the squads? To one decimal place?"

"Forty-one point one percent chance I survive; forty-two point nine percent chance you survive."

"No difference. Worse if anything," he said. I nodded, and he rubbed his chin, thinking.

Time was running out. I fidgeted.

"I need some candy, please."

"No, pet," Coil said, "I need you focused. What-"

I interrupted him, which I always tried to avoid doing, but I was feeling desperate. "Please. I've been using my power a lot. I'm going to get a bad headache, and then I won't be useful to you."

"No," he said, with more ferocity than I had expected. "Pitter isn't here to administer it, and won't be until this situation is over. Listen. Chance that we survive Crawler's attack if my soldiers use the laser attachments I've provided? The purple beams?"

Crawler? It took a second to get my mental footing. Coil was using his power. I wasn't sure how it worked, but I could always tell when he was doing it because the numbers always started changing all at once, and he knew things he couldn't. He'd know about things and numbers I might have told him, except I didn't remember telling him.

"Thirty-six point one-"

"If I deploy the Travelers that are on site at the moment?"

"Twenty-nine point-"

He pushed his monitor off his desk in a fit of anger. It crashed to the floor, pieces of screen rolling and sliding onto the rug at one end of the room.

Striding around the desk, he seized my arm and pulled me out of his office.

"Candy. Please," I said, whispering.

"No."

Gripping my wrist so hard it hurt, he drew me into the main area of his underground complex.

"Get battle ready!" Coil shouted. It was so out of character for him to shout. "Threat incoming!"

The soldiers that were at ease in the lower area of the base jumped to action, grabbing weapons and protective wear.

It wasn't going to make a difference. The numbers weren't changing enough. But he was already upset, so I didn't tell him that.

Trickster, Oliver and Sundancer appeared, running along the metal catwalk. Sundancer had her mask off, and her permed blond hair was damp against her scalp with sweat. Oliver was in casual clothing, like Trickster. He was good looking, his features chiseled. Athletically built. Trickster wasn't. He had a hook nose and long hair that didn't suit him, but I knew he was smart, and would have guessed it even if I didn't know, just going by the way he looked at stuff.

"What's going on?" Trickster asked.

"My pet has graciously informed us that Crawler of the Slaughterhouse Nine is less than thirty minutes away from entering this complex and murdering us all. Suggestions outside of the obvious would be appreciated."

"Trickster and I could go and try to stop him," Sundancer suggested.

" _Outside of the obvious_ , Sundancer. I've asked my pet. You try that and we're all _more_ likely to die."

"Why?"

"He's a regenerator," Coil answered, sounding irritated at having to explain, "And he regenerates exceedingly quickly. More to the point, he has the added advantage that any part that grows back is stronger than it was before, typically with extra features, growths and increased durability to render him more resistant to whatever hurt him or give him other capabilities. These adjustments are not only permanent _,_ but he's been working on it for some time."

Trickster jumped into the conversation. "The soldiers?"

Coil shook his head, "He's immune to conventional ammunition and explosives, and most likely to most _unconventional_ forms of ammunition and explosives as well. The laser attachments might have some small effect, but not enough to repel him or draw him here in one of his attempts to be injured."

"Which makes me wonder all of a sudden how he found us." Trickster added.

Coil shook his head, "One thing at a time. If he is here because he's seeking someone who could harm him, the only individuals on site who would be capable are Sundancer and your Noelle."

That gave the three teenagers pause.

"Noelle? But who even knows about Noelle, except-"

Coil raised his hand to silence Trickster. "Pet, the chance that Crawler would seek out Noelle first, given the opportunity?"

She felt the images filter out until she was looking at a pattern of scenarios. The vague shape of the hulking figure, the open vault door. The images snapped into two groups, one vastly larger than the other.

"Ninety-three point four percent."

" _Shit_ ," Trickster swore. "That's why he's here. Just like Leviathan, Crawler's coming after her?"

"I find every piece of evidence we gather only supports our working theory on your teammate," Coil said. He turned to Dinah, "The chance of survival if we were to give him what he wanted? Give him access to Noelle?"

"Hey, no," Trickster said.

"Eighty-one point nine percent chance we survive the next hour-"

"A start," Coil noted.

Something about the image bothered her. She pushed forward, seeing the possible realities that unfolded after that. Very, very few extended any meaningful distance into the future.

"Six percent chance we survive the next _five_ hours."

Coil stopped, then sighed. "Thank you, pet, for clarifying that."

She nodded.

"Awesome," Trickster responded, his voice thick with sarcasm. With a more serious tone and expression, he said, "Let's not give him access to Noelle. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Coil conceded. "Any further ideas?"

 _Time's running out_. She looked at the numbers for herself, even though she felt the initial throbbing pains at the base of her skull that foretold the encroaching headaches. _70.835716848961 percent chance I die in the next thirty minutes_.

"Pet," Coil said.

What I didn't get from his tone, I grasped from the vague images I saw of my most immediate possible futures.

"No," I pleaded, before he'd even told me what he wanted.

"It's necessary. I want you to look at a future where we survived, and I want you to tell us what happened."

"No. Please," I begged.

" _Now_ , pet."

"Why is she so against this?" Trickster asked.

"Headaches," I answered, pressing my hands to my head. "It breaks my power. It takes days, sometimes weeks before everything is sorted out and working again. Headaches the entire time, until everything is sorted out, worse headaches if I try to get numbers in the meantime. Have to be careful, can't muddle things up. Can't lie about the numbers, can't look at what happens, or it just becomes chaos. Safer to keep a distance, to make and follow rules. Safer to just ask the questions and let things fall into place."

"We don't have time to play twenty questions," Coil said. "Would you rather die?"

Would I? I wasn't sure. Death was bad, but at least then I'd go on to the afterlife. To heaven, I hoped. Finding an answer and surviving would mean days and weeks of absolute hell, of constant pain and not being able to use my power.

"Pet," Coil said, when I didn't give him an immediate response, "Do it _now_ , or you won't get any more candy for a long while."

I could see those futures unfolding. He _would_. I could see the pain and the sickness I would experience, the full brunt of my power without the candy to take the edges off, complete with all of the details I didn't want. Worst of all were the feedback loops. To go through withdrawal from the drugs, from the 'candy', while simultaneously being able to see and experience echoes of the future moments where I was suffering much the same way? It was a massive increase in the pain and being sick and mood swings and insomnia and feeling numb and skin-crawling hallucinations. There was no limit to these echoes, the feedback from my futures. It would never kill me, knock me out or put me in a coma, no matter how much I might want it to.

I had come close to experiencing it once, early on in my captivity. Never again. I would obey Coil in everything he asked for before I risked that happening again.

"Okay," I murmured. I picked out one of the paths where they survived. Even looking too closely at it made my head throb, like it was in a massive vise and someone had just cranked it a fraction tighter. Some of the possible worlds around the fringes of my consciousness disintegrated into a mess of disordered scenes as I pushed forward. The scenes and images of the less possible worlds flew around my mind like razor-sharp leaves in a gale, cutting at everything they touched. "It hurts."

"Now, pet. As quickly as you can."

He didn't know. It was something else, like trying to will myself to stick a hot poker in my body, in my _brain,_ knowing it would remain there and burn for weeks before it cooled.

But I did it, because as much as it would hurt, it would hurt more if I didn't get the candy. If Crawler got his hands on me, it wouldn't hurt at all after those first few moments of pain, but that was bad too. It meant dying.

I focused hard on that scene, taking it from an image small and vague enough that it could have fit on the end of a pencil to something full size. My head exploded with pain. I caught fragmentary images as I felt myself double over and heave the contents of my stomach onto the metal catwalk and Sundancer's legs and feet.

Sundancer could have yelled, but she didn't. Instead, she fell to her knees and grabbed me by the shoulders to steady me. It was just in time, because I felt fireworks erupt in my brain, felt my body go spastic. Too much, too fast. The image was overly sharp and detailed, overwhelming my senses, shredding all sense of time and present.

It was long minutes before I could even piece together what the others were saying and doing. I was lying down, head on Sundancer's lap, a cold cloth against my forehead. Oliver leaned next to her, holding a bowl of cold water.

"-running out of time!" Trickster shouted. Coil stood just behind Trickster, arms folded, staring out over the railing, at his underground base.

"Give her a moment," Sundancer said. "Whatever that was, it just knocked the poor kid out."

"That deadline she gave us? It's _here_. _Now_."

"I know, but pressuring her won't help anything."

A smell hit. Like the bitterest black chocolate in the world and overly strong coffee, the odor so thick on the air that I could taste it. With my already upset stomach, it made me want to retch.

"Smells bad," I said. "Make the smell go away."

"She's conscious. Is this smell a clue?" Trickster turned.

"No. It's a symptom," Coil answered him, not turning to look at her or them. "She may be dizzy, dazed, or she may rub or scratch at herself until she fully recovers. Don't let her scratch her corneas or rub herself until she bleeds."

I tried to recall what I'd seen. "Darkness."

"You mentioned that earlier, pet."

"We were in the dark, and it smelled like meat. It smelled like sweat, too. And we were all pressed in close together."

" _Where_?" Coil asked.

"There was a metal door in front of us. Big. The vault door downstairs."

"Noelle's room," Trickster said, an instant before Dinah put the pieces together.

"How many of us, pet?"

"Everyone here was there," she looked towards the soldiers.

"Is _she_ in there?"

"She was. Yes."

Coil turned and swept me up in his arms. My skin crawled at the contact. I didn't say or do anything about it, because I wasn't able. Too sick, too tired. Besides, I could still see the numbers, vaguer and fleeting but I could see them. It wouldn't matter one way or another.

Coil took the stairs two at a time as he descended to the ground floor, Trickster, Oliver and Sundancer hurrying after him.

And then came a crash that echoed through the base, and as the sound faded away an inhuman howl of victory resounds through the base.

 _95.67239507183650149 percent chance I died in the next five minutes._

A ball of ice seems to form in my stomach.

Crawler crashed through the wall which had until moments before contained the main entrance, landing with his many legs scrambling for hold on the metal walkway.

For only a moment I can see him clearly. He is massive, bigger than the largest of vans. He moves on a series of grotesque limbs. The rearmost legs are bundles are heavy muscle shaped like those off a massive cat. The next two pairs of limbs are reminiscent of a centipede; solid sticks of flesh and bone each ending in a tire sized, clawed, paw. Finally, at the front of his body clearly visible as he rears up onto his back four limbs are a pair of scythe like limbs each as long as a man.

His head is covered in a multitude of eyes. They are all colors and some have oddly shaped pupils, one stands out for being completely blue with no white or pupil. There are more than I can count in that brief moment. Spreading out beneath the majority of his eyes is a gaping maw of a mouth at least five feet wide and filled with teeth of all shapes and sizes.

All of him, every inch, is a tapestry of ugly colors. He has no distinct tone. In some places white bone covers his surface, mostly though his thick hide is an array of sickly greens and greys.

For a moment the walkway holds, creaking. Then Crawler slams down onto all eight limbs and the structure collapses to the level below, pitching Coil, the Travelers, and several soldiers off to the floor below. I lucked out, cushioning my fall on Coil's stomach, knocking the wind from him.

Coil's soldiers do not hesitate. They open fire. The base is filled with the sounds of gunfire, and beams of purple light erupt everywhere.

The Soldier's shouts are drowned out by the rapturous screams of the beast within the base.

With a burst of speed at odds with Crawlers massive size he lunges front limbs outstretched then sweeping inwards. The arm blades scythe down a dozen soldiers going through their body armor as if it was nonexistent.

The men fall in halves.

Blood fountains from corpses and the smell of iron mingles with gunpowder and ozone.

Sundancer forms a sun with her power only a few feet to my side. In the confined area of the base she has to limit the size or risk killing all of us. When the sun reaches the size of a beach ball she launches it across the base into Crawlers face.

The beast howls. For a moment I hope the attack worked. That hope quickly turns to dread as I realize Crawler's howls are rising and falling.

Laughing. Crawler is laughing.

Ballistic opens fire with bits of rubble and Trickster lobs grenades as he moves from place to place around the base; swapping himself with the soldiers' corpses. Coil slings me over his shoulder and makes his way towards the vault.

Screams and shouting and above it all Crawler's laughing follow us.

We are almost to the vault when a blur slices Coil's legs out from under him and I roll down and across the floor facing the ceiling.

Sitting in the rafters, hanging off the edge of a lighting fixture, barely visible are a pair of moving shadows. They are small perhaps two feet tall, they have long limbs, small bodies, and bulbous heads. One's head is taken up almost entirely by a pair of unnaturally large eyes while the other sports elephant like ears. Their odd faces do not betray any emotion.

Then Crawler looms over me. Finally, my fear catches up with me. It's taken this long to fight its way through the pain, and the certainty of my own death but it washes over me in waves as I try to scramble back. I can see Crawler's bulk tilting as his upper body begins to fall.

 _100 percent chance I die within the next minute._

I close my eyes.


	9. 2-2

AN: I'm not entirely happy with this one but I do think it needed to be written. Special thanks go out to this stories new Beta Dareth, from Sufficient Velocity.

It was recently suggested I add a tragedy label to this fic based on the death of Dinah Alcott. While I understand the suggestion I feel that it would be inaccurate to do so. People are going to die in this story, Dinah was only the first. That said the focus is not on the deaths, at least not yet. But then I'm not very good at labeling what categories my fics fall under. If you have an opinion on this or anything else feel free to let me know.

Read and Review!

* * *

2.2 From the Desk of Emily Piggot

From: George Husereau, detainment supervisor PRT ENE

To: Emily Piggot, regional director PRT ENE

Detainee Status Updates

Subject: Daniel Hebert

Alias: None

Age: 47

Family: Taylor Hebert; A.K.A. Skitter: for further information refer to villains, Brockton Bay, Undersiders.

Occupation: Head of hiring; Dockwoorkers Union.

May 16:

Daniel Hebert appeared to enter a state of shock shortly after being detained, After approximately forty minutes spent muttering and rocking against one of the walls he passed out and slept fitfully against the cell wall for approximately twelve hours.

May 17:

Mr. Hebert woke and after a short time began banging on the door of his cell and shouting in an attempt to procure information regarding his daughter's whereabouts and health. At 3:15 PM Mr. Hebert was informed, as per orders, that his daughter had refused to negotiate with the PRT and had instead accepted an offer to work for the Black Company.

Mr. Hebert fell into a rage. He loudly denied that his daughter would do such a thing and lashed out physically against the door of his cell several times while demanding to speak with his daughter. This behavior continued for approximately one hour.

Mr. Hebert once again fell into a state of shock and continued to quietly deny that his daughter would join the Black Company for several hours before falling asleep.

May 18:

Mr. Hebert remained largely unresponsive.

May 19:

Mr. Hebert remained largely unresponsive.

May 20:

Mr. Hebert remained largely unresponsive.

May 21:

Mr. Hebert remained largely unresponsive.

* * *

From: Emily Piggot, regional director PRT ENE

To: Rebecca Costa-Brown, chief director PRT

Date May 17

Local resident Daniel Hebert entered PRT ENE headquarters early in the morning. Mr. Hebert admitted his daughter was a supervillain and the case was brought to my attention. I met with Mr. Hebert shortly after noon.

After learning that his daughter was the cape known as Skitter, a local cape involved in the post attack incident I appraised you off, I proceeded to provoke Mr. Hebert. I dismissed his daughter's claims and emphasized the potential damage the girl could cause to the reputation of the PRT, Protectorate and the Endbringer truce.

As intended the stress of his situation and my provocation prompted Mr. Hebert into admitting knowledge of both Shadow Stalkers civilian identity, and Armsmaster's violation of the truce.

Clearly not in a state to either sign, or adhere to, a nondisclosure agreement Mr. Hebert is being detained under the Parahuman Identity Protection Act until such a time as he can be trusted. The threat he represents is considered contained.

A PRT negotiator was dispatched along with a team of PRT troopers, Protectorate member Velocity and Ward Kid Win in an attempt to convince Taylor Hebert, alias Skitter, to join the Wards as a probationary member. Ms. Hebert refused citing an inability to trust the Protectorate and Wards.

No combat occurred. Ms. Hebert chose to join the Black Company and left peacefully. Before leaving she revealed that the Undersiders as well as the Travelers are being employed by the supervillain Coil who she claims has a power which enables him to manipulate probability.

Furthermore, Ms. Hebert claimed that Dinah Alcott, a kidnapping victim, is being detained by Coil. Coil is allegedly, through the use of drugs, forcing her to use her power to aid him. Ms. Hebert claims that Ms. Alcott is a precognitive able to predict the likelihood of certain outcomes as percentages with a high degree of accuracy.

Perhaps even more disturbing, Ms. Hebert claims that Coil has agents within the PRT who feed him information.

Expect paperwork from the Black Company claiming responsibility for the local villains Skitter and Tattletale to be forwarded to you shortly.

Lists of damages as well as a complete list of the deceased are still being compiled though seem to be in line with thinker estimates.

The gangs are inactive for the moment in respect of the truce and camps have been established for the surviving civilians.

I am once again requesting additional capes and PRT officers to aid with the recovery and to deal with the threat presented by Coil, and the general rise in crime that follows Endbringer attacks.

* * *

From: Captain, Black Company

To: Emily Piggot regional director PRT ENE, Battery provisional leader Protectorate ENE, Legend leader Protectorate, Rebecca Costa-Brown, chief director PRT

May 18

The Villains formerly known as Tattletale and Skitter have joined the Black Company, now under the names Snitch and Widow respectively, on a ten year service plan.

As per our contract with the United Nations and the United States of America, their former aliases are to be removed from the PRT/Protectorate villain database, and their new aliases added to the Black Company's files.

Warrants for their arrests are to be rescinded and bounties removed.

The Black Company hereby takes responsibility for the future actions of Snitch and Widow. They will be held to the agreed-upon rules of engagement.

Attached you will find the standard nondisclosure agreements for a hero's identity as well as for the incident following the May 15th Endbringer attack.

* * *

From: Emily Piggot, regional director PRT ENE

To: Roy Christner, mayor Brockton Bay

Date: May 18

Camps for refugees have been established and are beginning to fill. Food supplies are expected to hold for the next two days by which time emergency rations and medical equipment should begin arriving.

Yesterday we received a tip as to the location of your missing niece. The source was suspect but we have since confirmed the report's accuracy with the help of several Protectorate thinkers.

Securing your niece is of course a high priority. Additionally recent information on her captor marks him as one of, if not the greatest, criminal threats currently residing in the city. Unfortunately, the PRT and Protectorate are currently spread too thin with our efforts to secure the city in the aftermath of the recent attack to act on the information.

We will reassess our options once the current crisis has been sufficiently addressed.

* * *

From: Roy Christner, mayor Brockton Bay

To: Emily Piggot, regional director Protectorate PRT ENE

Date: May 19

I understand resources are limited at the moment director, however this is my niece. Forward me whatever information you have as well as whatever plans you have to deal with the situation, and keep me apprised of any developments.

I'll see what favors I can cash in to get you more people though I'm not sure what if any good it'll do given the circumstances.

I'm forwarding the governor's plans for a memorial service dedicated to the fallen capes. Look it over and select the earliest feasible date.

* * *

From: Rebecca Costa-Brown, chief director PRT

To: Emily Piggot, regional director PRT ENE

Date: May 19

Good work on containing information regarding the incident with Armsmaster. While losing a potential recruit to the Company is hardly ideal it is preferable to having another villain on the streets. More important is that we are not dealing with the potential public outcry Armsmaster's actions could cause.

The report on Coil's actions and resources is concerning. Unfortunately the Protectorate and PRT do not have resources to spare at the moment. The best I can offer is to transfer one or more Wards from some of our larger cities, even then it may take several weeks to pry assets away from the other directors.

For now, do the best you can with the resources available. I may be able to temporarily re-assign several capes for the duration of any operation to secure miss Alcott. Her potential value would more than justify it however I can't promise anything permanent at this time, in no small part due to the possibility of the city being written off as a lost cause.

Perhaps in a few months if the city has not been abandoned the situation can be re-evaluated.

* * *

From: Protectorate think tank

To: Jeff Hoffman; United States Bounty Bureau, Rebecca Costa-Brown; chief director PRT, Legend leader Protectorate

Date: May 20

Having reviewed the video evidence, the deceased's body and all relevant records regarding the deceased we are confident in our conclusion that the cape known as the Siberian was in fact a projection created by Dr. William Manten. This concurs with the Black Company's assertion, and validates their claim on the Siberian's bounty.

* * *

From: Jeff Hoffman; United States Bounty Bureau

To: Captain, Black Company

Date: May 21

Protectorate thinkers have verified your kill of the Siberian. Her/his bounty has been transfered to your account.

Congratulations Captain. A lot of us here have been waiting a long time for someone to claim her bounty.

* * *

From: Emily Piggot, regional director PRT ENE

To: Rebecca Costa-Brown, chief director PRT

Date May: 21

Approximately one hour ago Mannequin of the Slaughterhouse 9 infiltrated PRT headquarters here in Brockton Bay. Moving through the ventilation system he gained access to Armsmaster's holding room. Armsmaster suffered severe injuries and was evacuated for emergency medical attention by Dragon.

The Slaughterhouse 9 have come to Brockton Bay and given everything else that we are already dealing with we are far too understaffed to handle this situation. We need whatever assistance we can get immediately. Even if any relocated assets are only here for the duration of this crisis.

Without further support I'm uncertain the city will survive.

* * *

From: Captain, Black Company

To: Emily Piggot, regional director PRT ENE, Battery, regional leader Protectorate ENE

Date: May 21

The Company had plans for a neutral meeting with the gangs tomorrow night. Given recent developments we believe it would be prudent for the Heroes to attend as well. Full attendance would be inadvisable and leave the city semi-vulnerable, however a show of force is highly recommended.

The original location for such meetings was leveled during the Leviathan attack. A small island in the middle of the lake created by the attack has been designated as the new neutral ground. Respond as soon as possible to receive your verification signal.


	10. 2-3

AN: Thanks go out to Rajvik_wolfboy who swung by my google doc to give me a bit of help getting the ball rolling with this one.

* * *

Company Girl 2.3

"No!" Carol near shrieked.

"For the last time Amy, no! I don't care what he told you! I don't care what his powers are! I don't care if he doesn't think of himself as a villain! The Black Company are murderers for hire! They are repugnant, amoral, _fiends_ , just like every other villain on this god forsaken planet!" She spat out. Her eyes burning with hate, and her mouth twisted into a snarl.

"Liars, thieves, _kidnappers_ , rapists and assassins! That's what you would invite into _my_ home?! After I took you in and raised you?! They want to use you, to use us! Calling them would only give them leverage!"

Carol paced about the kitchen like a caged animal glaring my way occasionally.

It was bullshit. I knew it was bullshit. At the very least calling and asking couldn't hurt anything. But she was so stubborn and untrusting.

This was the solution. This was the way to save Mark, without breaking my rules!

And it hurt.

In spite of everything; I knew Carol didn't trust me, didn't love me. But to accuse me of trying to invite murderers into _her_ home. Not ours, and certainly not mine, but _hers_. Like I was setting the family up to be killed in their sleep.

That hurt.

I could feel tears stinging at my eyes. Why did Carol have to be so bull headed! Couldn't she understand that just this once I could at least _indirectly_ help cure brain damage?! That refusing this option forced me to tear myself apart day after day just to justify inaction! Why couldn't she just _understand_!?

But this wasn't my fault. Not anymore. I'd given her the solution, and she was spitting on it. Well that made it _her_ cross to bear, not mine.

"Fine! Fine, then it's on your head! Every day that Mark isn't getting better is on _you!_ Let's see how you deal with leaving someone a vegetable, because this one's not on me!"

Turning on my heal I bolted out of the kitchen, towards my room. Once I stepped inside I slammed the door behind me before collapsing onto the bed.

Why? Why did Carol have to ruin this? I knew she had trust issues, that she had always hated the Black Company, and the copycat groups that popped up from time to time. Was it the fact that like New Wave the Company went without masks? Did she see them as a perversion of her life's work?

She always called them killers for hire, villains masquerading as heroes, murderers and worse. She had such a stringent black and white view of morality. One that if I was being completely honest I had picked up from her somewhere along the way. A mindset I was finding harder and harder to cling to when the _merc_ offered aid, and the _hero_ refused it out of hand. What made it worse was that she was a hypocrite!

I knew she called them and their copycats, killers, but it was only by miracles and my own ability to heal that kept Victoria and sometimes even she herself from killing or crippling some hapless idiot. Lightsabers and super strength made nonlethal, _difficult_. Honestly it was only a matter of time until something even I couldn't fix happened, and then she would blame the victim, and me.

And then what, where would that leave New Wave? Hell, more importantly, where would that leave me? One death and the Protectorate would come down on us like the wrath of God. They wouldn't send us to the cage. Heroes, even overzealous ones, are in short supply. But they could split us up, and not one of us had a civilian ID. I'd be stuck, living on Protectorate bases, healing capes, troopers, and civilians for as long as I lived.

I can't help but shudder at the thought of it. I already suffered from burn outs and exhaustion just doing the healing I already did. What the hell would it be like for that to be my entire life, to have nothing else? Did I really even have anything else? Did school even count?

And whose fault was it that I'd never even have the chance for a normal life? Carol, Carol and her damned New Wave. Did she ever stop to consider just what her cause would mean for her children? Did any of them? What kind of irresponsible parents put their children in the line of fire like that?! Hell back then they didn't even have the research to know we were all but guaranteed to trigger! Or, did they? Oh whatever, that's not the point! They willingly chose to risk their, then, unpowered children to make a political statement!

With a deep shuddering breath, I pushed all that away.

I knew she would hate the idea; it was a given. But to turn down a chance to fix Mark? I knew she loved to be in control, that she had married Mark in no small part because his depression made him compliant to her, but surely this had to bother her. Even if Mark had always been a token husband, now he was far less than that, a piece of living furniture. She couldn't want this, _couldn't_ be happy with it.

So was it her hate and mistrust for the Company that held her back?

I'd done some digging, they showed up to help in the aftermath of Endbringer attacks just like Croaker said. Not every attack, no, but when they did they made a dent in whatever city they visited. Croaker was well known for aiding surgical teams, and when the Company stuck around for any length of time, in any city, cape crime rates dropped.

They are known, and they are feared. No one ever acted while the Endbringer truce was still in effect, but the presence of the Black Company seemed to have a way of extending the truce.

They didn't go after heroes, except occasionally to recruit them. They had, almost entirely stuck to their agreed rules of engagement with only a few black marks on their record, and those were laid at the feet of individuals, not the group as a whole.

They certainly were not heroes, but I couldn't call them villains either. That was all I really needed to know. They wouldn't attack us, why would they? They had everything they could possibly need, and attacking New Wave would cost them their ability to act within the United States, and possibly any other UN country that had agreed to set up a bounty system and granted them access.

And that was the problem.

I _know_ that they wouldn't pull anything. I _know_ that at least asking for help couldn't hurt anything. Now I also know that Carol refuses to see that. Maybe she just flat out cannot see it.

Rolling over onto my back I stared up at the ceiling, blank white filled my vision.

Mark was hurt. I couldn't break my rule to heal him. I'd drawn my line in the sand years ago, I wasn't about to cross it now. The brain makes us who we are, there was too much temptation there. It would be all too easy for me to give in and change someone for my benefit. If what I did was actually healing instead of bio-manipulation… but it isn't.

Despite what I'd told Carol downstairs, about it being on her head and not mine… I still felt responsible. Mark was downstairs, lying on the couch, a prisoner in his own body. Despite my fears I could fix it.

Or I could call Croaker.

Blinking I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed and leaned forward to stare at the floor.

I could do that. I could call him. I could see what he could or would do. Carol might not want anything to do with the Company, but I was willing to meet them halfway at least.

Carol would hate me. Hate me more? Did she already hate me or did she just not trust me? Was there even a difference when it came to her?

I shook my head. That train of thought wouldn't help.

Carol wouldn't just let them in to heal Mark. No I needed her out of the way, probably Vicky as well, but she was out on patrol.

Oh God, what would Vicky think of this? Would she agree with Carol, or would she just be happy to have her Dad back, whole and healthy?

The idea of Carol hating me didn't bother me too much, how big of a difference could it honestly make? But Vicky? If she hated me…

I shiver went down my spine at the thought.

I had to do this though. It wasn't fair to leave Mark a vegetable. Once he was back on his feet I'm sure Vicky would forgive me.

Barely looking at my phone I did my best to stop thinking. I knew what I needed to do, I just had to stop second guessing and do it. Flipping through contacts I found the number I was looking for and hit call. It rang a few times before finally being answered.

"Amy? What's wrong? Is it Mark?" Aunt Sarah's anxious, exhausted voice filtered through my phone.

"Mark's stable, nothing's changed, aunt Sarah." My voice comes out bitter. "Listen, I might have a way to help Mark."

"But I thought-"

"Still can't heal brains." I said cutting her off a bit harshly. "But I met a healer after the Leviathan fight, one who can heal brain injuries."

"That's fantastic!" She near shouted. "When can they get to him, have they agreed to heal him, how long will it take?"

"Aunt Sarah," I cut her off again. "It's Croaker, he works for the Black Company." A beat of silence.

"That's not ideal, but I don't see how-"

"Carol refuses to even consider it."

More silence.

"You want me to talk her into it. Make her see sense."

"No, though that's not a bad plan either. I want you to get her out of the house."

"Amy, that's just… Amy you're asking me to go behind my sister's back. To take a decision about her husband's health out of her hands."

"Yes, yes I am. She's too emotional about this. She won't listen to anything I say and I can't even get Croaker in here to diagnose Mark until she's out of the way."

"Amy, I can't just go behind her back like that. She barely trusts anyone as it is if she were to think I betrayed her too…"

"For fucks sake aunt Sarah, not you too! Mark is trapped in his own body right now! I know someone who can heal him! But with Carol in the way I can't even get an estimate on how long it would take." I hissed into the phone, fighting to keep my voice down.

"Look, just, get Carol out of here for a bit. Take her somewhere, sit her down and hash this out, try and talk her into it. If we're lucky by the time you convince her Mark will already be back on his feet. If we're not, then at least we'll be one step closer."

"Amy, are you sure about this? Going behind Carol's back like this…" Sarah didn't finish the thought.

Then again she didn't need to. I knew exactly how Carol was likely to react to this but I'd be damned if I let that stop me. Not this time, not here, not now. Mark might not have always been there for me but that wasn't his fault. His depression made it hard, and he'd always been fair with me on his good days. I owed him more than I owed Carol at the very least.

"I know. I don't know just how badly she'll react, but I'll deal with the fallout when it happens. Right now, what's important is getting Mark back on his feet."

Sarah didn't respond right away. I was starting to worry that she might tell me no. That she might tell me to wait until she could convince Carol.

"Alright, Amy. You're right. Mark needs help and putting it off is only going to cause him pain. We'll try this your way. Let me know when. I'll try to keep Carol calm when all this comes out."

I let out breath and took a moment to calm down, and refocus.

"Thank you. I'll be in touch, aunt Sarah."

Ending the call, I started punching in Croaker's number. I'd written it down before showing Carol the card. Good thing too seeing as she had ripped it up and thrown it out.

"Who are you, and how did you get this number?" Croakers rough voice asked.

In spite of the less than warm opening I felt slight relief flood through me. This was it, I was going to see things put right.

"Croaker, it's Amy Dallon, Panacea. I, I need a favor."

"Oh, Miss Dallon. Sorry about that. Wasn't really expecting a call, and with everything that's been going on the past few days it actually slipped my mind that I gave you that number."

"Sorry?"

"No, no, I should be the one apologizing." Croaker waved it off. "Didn't mean to forget. Everyone's been on edge not knowing where the nine have gotten to, then we got a couple new members and had to throw one of Coil's goons out on his ass for trying to slip in and get at them."

"Wait, really? Why would Coil of all people risk pissing off the Black Company? He has to know the risks?"

Croaker's chuckle was far darker this time. "Oh he knows alright. Thing is he didn't have much choice. The new members were a pair of cape's he employed, and between the two of them they know enough of his dirty laundry to put him at the top of everyone's hit list. We've got, well best not to say over the phone and all that. Point is, he'll not be getting them back."

"I," I wanted to ask about the capes who had supposedly left Coil for the Black Company, but I needed to get Mark help. I could catch up on the latest cape gossip later. "I need your help, Mark, Flashbang, he took a blow to the head. It's, he's essentially forgotten how to do everything. It's like he needs to retrain his body to handle even the simplest tasks. There's nothing I can do for him, but, I'm hoping you can."

"Ahh." The line went silent for a moment and in that instant I was terrified that Croaker would shoot down my request, that perhaps Carol had been right and he would ask for something in return.

"Let me just clear this with the Captain and grab an escort or two. Shouldn't take more than a half an hour."

I blinked at that, surprised. I guess Carol really was wrong.

"Thank you, I really appreciate this Croaker."

"Not a problem miss Dallon. Just because we're not crazy enough to fight Endbringers, doesn't me we don't appreciate those who are." With that he hung up the call, and I started dialing again.

"Aunt Sarah, you've got half an hour to get her out of the house."

{}{}{}{}

The sound of the doorbell ringing sent me running.

Opening the door, I found myself face to face with a trio in military gear. Croaker I recognized but the tanned/browned? woman of what I guessed to be middle eastern descent and the scowling man who was showing a touch of grey along the edges of his hair are new faces.

All three wore the grey and black camo uniforms; knee and elbow pads, bullet proof combat vests and helmets that seemed to cover the back of the neck and connect to their vests. The company emblem, the fire breathing skull is displayed proudly below the left collar bone. The insignia on the woman's sleeve marks her as a sergeant while the unfamiliar older man's single stripe marks him to be a private.

"Miss Dallon, this is Owl," the woman nodded politely. "and Raven." The man continued to scowl.

"Pleasure, are the guns really necessary?" I asked eying the pistols all three wear openly.

"Fraid so. The cities not exactly safe at the moment. Besides this was the minimum for a trip off base right now. Only reason none of us are carrying rifles is because New Wave are considered friendlies, and because Owl's along." Said woman smirked lightly.

Part of me wanted to ask how her being along replaced three rifles, but I shook off the notion. Mark is the priority. "He's in here." I said leading the group to the den.

I grimaced even thinking about it. Who has a den? Dens are for animals and families in old sitcoms. Real families have living rooms, not stupid immaculately kept rooms that just so happen to have a couch and tv. But then we weren't much of a family. After all, if we were it wouldn't have come to this now would it?

Raven and Owl moved off to the side of the room while Croaker moved towards Mark with a frown on his face.

"Mark, it's ok, I'll called them to heal you." I calmly said, lightly gripping my adopted father's hand.

Marks face twitched, but that could mean anything.

"Well, I've seen plenty worse than this, but it'll take time to get him up and on his feet again."

"How long?" Raven asked flatly.

"Day, maybe two." I bit my lip at the response. I probably only had an hour at best before Carol got back.

"Captain will get edgy if we're gone that long. Raven, call it in, see if we're ok to stay the duration or need to do this over a few days." Owl spoke calmly.

Raven's helmet expanded, for lack of a better term, until it covered his entire face and neck. Where there once was a face now grinned a light grey skull on a black background.

"This is Raven, I'm with Owl and Croaker, you hearing me base?" Raven's muffled voice filtered through his helmet.

…

"Yeah Candy, we're good. No issues. Injuries going to take a day or two though."

Owl perched disinterestedly on the armrest of the sofa.

…

"Uh huh, just need to clear it with the Captain and see what the…" Raven paused and glanced around the room. "Candy, let me get back to you when I've talked with New Wave." Owl's head snapped to Raven before locking eyes on me. Even as Raven's helmet retracted he fixed me with a glare of his own.

"Amy," Owl's voice is perfectly level. "Where is your family? Surely they would want to be here for this."

I squirm on the spot, unable to meet her eyes. "Vicky is patrolling. It keeps her mind off of her boyfriend and Mark… Aunt Sarah, is keeping Carol out of the house." I finally admitted.

"Why?" Owl asked. Her eyes narrowed as she stared me down.

"..."

"Amy," Croaker's voice was stern. "What's-"

The front door blew off its hinges.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a black and green blur shoot from Owl's side and into her hands where it took the form a sleek looking assault rifle. Croaker had a hand clamped tightly on the grip of his pistol and Raven had both his side arm and knife in hand, held up at chest height as he slipped into a firing stance. All three of their helmets expanded into masks Croaker's mask was a perfect match for Ravens, while Owl's reflected her namesake; Big eyes and a sharp beak, both black with the details and the surrounding head and feathers done in grey.

Standing in the entranceway stood Carol with a two handed blade of light in hand. Vicky floating behind her looked ready for a fight.

"Carol!" I could just make out aunt Sarah's voice.

I froze, panicked. It was far too soon for her to be back. She'd only left fifteen minutes ago! How had she found out? How had she gotten back here so fast?

"Vicky," Carol's tone sent chills down my spine. "Call the PRT. You three are under citizen's arrest for breaking and entering, trespassing, attempted abduction, attempted murder, theft, whatever I can pin on you. Now. Lower. Your. Weapons." She snarled.

"Carol, stop!" Aunt Sarah shouted landing lightly behind Carol and Vicky.

"Stop?! Sarah, they invaded my home!"

"Easy! Easy, Brandish! We're only here to help!" Croaker shouted slowly taking his hand from his still holstered pistol and stepping forward, bringing all attention onto himself. A detached part of my mind noticed he left Owl and Raven a clear line of fire. "We were asked to come and heal Flashbang, that's all."

"Liar! I would _never_ invite you into my home!" Then Carol noticed me. Her eyes shot wide open, for a second she appeared shocked before her face became a rictus of rage as she snarled at me like an animal.

" _You."_ Acid would have fit more pleasantly in my ear then Carol's accusation. I flinched, ducking my head low and turning away from her.

"Amy?" Vicky's voice is plaintive, and that stings in it's own way. Taking a deep shuddering breath, I step forward and away from Mark, throw my shoulders back and stare down Carol. I don't know if it is defiance or simply a need to see her reaction, but I do it.

"I called them." Silence. "Mark needed help and you would rather he suffer than get help from the Company. So I convinced aunt Sarah to get you out of the house, and I called them."

Carol spun to face her sister. I noticed Owl and Raven lowering their weapons, slightly, but both stayed tense and ready.

" _You?!_ You were part of this?!"

"Carol, Mark needed help. They can help him." Sarah pleaded.

"Sarah, they can't be trusted! They're killers!" I half expected the members of the Company to bristle at Carol's accusation, but there was no visible reaction from any of them.

"I know Carol, but they have no reason to go after any of us." She took a deep breath. "Croaker, right?" She called out.

"That's me, yeah." The man nodded before dismissing his mask back into his helmet.

"Can you heal Mark?"

"Yeah. Going to take a day or two, and I'll need to stay close to him, but I can get him back on his feet."

Carol whipped around to look at Croaker an impressive range of emotions battling for dominance across her face all too fast for me to identify. Quickly she shut them away behind her blank lawyer face.

Vicky was glancing between everyone and worrying at her lower lip.

I didn't know what to think anymore. Then I heard something that sent shivers up and down my spine.

Giggling.

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	11. 2-4

AN: I had originally planned or this to be significantly longer… but you've all been waiting a little over a month and a helpful acquaintance suggested I'd hit a good stopping point. Thanks Rajvic_wolfboy for pointing that out. That may cause the next post to be on the short side, but I'm not sure yet.

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Company Girl 2.4

Girlish giggles filled the room. As one everyone not already facing towards Mark spun around. I immediately wished I had not.

A perversion of nature and science was creeping out from around the couch.

The face is that of a centipede, human sized, with mandibles made from some kind of fattened needle, filled with lord only knows what. The eyes are human, one blue, two brown, and one black. The neck is a long tube of flesh and even curved it must be three feet long. Mark's head is between the syringe mandibles. One point at each temple.

I stared in abject horror as the rest of the monstrosity moved in complete silence around the couch and into view, it's neck twisting sickeningly so that it's poised jaws did not slip from their place.

The body of the thing is about the same size as a large dog, and armored in some kind of organic plating. Four sets of limbs held it only a few inches above the floor. Many of the limbs seem to sport a variety of tools. I recognized scalpels, syringes, clamps and suction, and spools of surgical thread.

A pair of dull red tentacles connected at the shoulders lay flat along the spine the tips curling open and shut seemingly at random. The thing had a scorpion like tail equipped with its own assortment of tools, most notably a rotary saw, a rib spreader, and a cardiac needle.

All the while as the abomination moved to settle itself along the back of the couch the giggling continued.

"Bonesaw." Owl hissed. She had shifted her aim to the thing, though she wasn't firing. Maybe afraid whatever the thing was would be able to inject Mark before it was completely destroyed? It would make sense, Bonesaw is the biotinker. No telling where the important bits of her creation are actually located.

The giggling slowly died down.

"Hi Croaker! Oh, oh did you manage to save the three I got with the intestine devouring bacteria in Detroit?! I never got to ask."

"Bonesaw, as pleasant as always aren't you?" Croaker growled. "I managed to save one of them. Sandy is still getting laid telling the story about how he survived a brush with you." Croaker's tone was a bit vicious but otherwise reminded me of someone teasing a young child about 'icky' things like kissing.

"That's disgusting! Don't you know you're not supposed to talk to little girls about things like that! Hmmp, jerk. You were all so distracted you never even noticed Rex. I mean he can be very sneaky, but still, that's just rude to ignore him like that."

"Get away from my husband!"

"Mmm, nope!" The demented child singsonged through her pet.

Raven and Croaker were shooting glances all about the room while Owl kept her full attention on Rex, presumably trusting the others to watch her back.

"You bitch." Vicky shouted. She had made her way into the room at some point and was visibly restraining herself from attacking the franken-thing.

"Language! You're supposed to be a hero. Don't you realize you could corrupt a young girl like me with that kind of talk! I mean, really. I had hoped I'd get to talk to big sis in private but noooo. All you meanies had to come along and make things complicated."

"Big sis?" Sarah asked, voicing the question I was thinking. I had to marvel at how everyone managed to not sound scared shitless. Am I the only one terrified right now?

"Uh-huh! See I'm the best at tinkering with people and she's the best at fixing people! So I figure if we worked together we could make even more amazing stuff than I do now!"

"M-me?" Oh God, please no.

"Yes! Think of all the amazing projects we could do together! Oh you'll love being part of the family, uncle Jack always makes sure I have plenty of material to work with, and aunty Siberian always looks out for me." She sounded so happy and sweet and innocent and all the time the voice was coming out of that thing of hers.

"Well, she used to anyway." She hissed. No one answered her.

A pair of hands firmly grasped my shoulders and drew me back. I nearly shrieked until I realized it was Aunt Sarah. It didn't escape my notice that Carol moved away from me.

"You're not going to touch her!" Vicky snarled as her aura flared full force.

"Well of course I'm not going to touch her! Not right now anyway, I'm not even here silly. But of course once she joins my family I'll need to make some improvements, just the standard stuff. Unless you want something special, I can do special orders! Maybe you'd like to be able to secrete tree frog venom? Or change colors like a chameleon? Those could be useful." I could almost picture the sickeningly sweet little girl tilting her head and tapping a blood-soaked finger against her chin.

"I'm not joining." There I said it, now go away and leave me alone!

"Oh don't be silly of course you're joining." The response was immediately and matter of fact.

"She just said she won't join you murders. Now get lost and leave my family alone!" Vicky spat.

The thing giggled and I started to shiver uncontrollably. "You don't understand. I picked her, she's my candidate. She has to take the tests now!" I could feel my legs ready to give out, Aunt Sarah was keeping me up for now. "Oh! You're not allowed to leave the city! If you do leave, I get to try out one of my plagues! The others don't like it when I do that though. Uncle Jack says it's because I'm supposed to share and not hog all the fun."

Oh God, she's talking about releasing a plague the same way most people talk about being annoyed with their friend's pet. It wouldn't affect me. I can probably counter whatever she might create, but if it turned out to be fast acting there would be no telling how many people might die first.

"But really we need to get you to take this seriously Panacea… hmm you're going to need a new name too, but that can wait. First things first, and the first thing is to start breaking you from that no can do attitude! You are going to join the nine!"

I wanted to swallow or gulp or something but my mouth was too dry for that. "I won't. I won't hurt people. I'm a healer."

"So? I'm a healer too you know. One of the best. Probably second only to you, actually. That is why I'm uncle Jack's favorite. I mean after all, who knows how the body works and how much stress it can take better than a healer? And really the difference between medicine and poison is such a fine line. All it can take is a few extra milligrams, or a change in concentration, or a missed step in the preparation. Adderall and Crystal meth are actually very similar chemically speaking after all."

I shook my head. I could feel the tears streaming down my face. Everyone was glancing at me, looking at me. They were all starting to suspect, starting to realize what I'm actually capable of. Now they'll be afraid of me. Now they'll start to hate me.

"I won't do it." I choked out. "I won't be like you, I heal people! I don't hurt them!"

The thing seemed to sigh. "Maybe that's too big a step just now. Maybe we need to try something simpler. You can work your way up to hurting later. Maybe a different rule of yours would be easier to break? Everyone says you don't heal brains."

I could feel all my muscles stiffen at the almost casual comment. "I can't heal brains." The lie was automatic. It came out in an instant, maybe too quickly.

"Hmmm, nope. Nope, nope, nope. I don't believe you. See I know a lot about how powers work. I should, I've poked through enough capes' brains after all. I've actually pushed a few people into triggering while I worked on them, let me tell you the data I got from that is just amazing! So believe me when I say I think I have a pretty good idea about what your powers really are."

Oh God. She knows. She actually knows. Their looking at me again. Their all looking at me again they'll know what I am, that I'm a monster waiting to happen.

"So let's try it this way, you can heal your Dad, or you can watch him die in front of your whole family! Even if you don't save him that'll be progress. After all, not healing is pretty much the same as hurting. This will be perfect! Oh uncle Jacks going to be so proud of me! He's always going on about how real art is about changing the way people think instead of how they look or how their bodies work."

"Don't do this, please!"

The thing just giggled again and the fangs snapped shut driving the syringes into Mark's skull. "This is for your own good! It's time you broke some rules!"

"No!" With a scream I wrenched free of Aunt Sarah's grip and lunged for Mark. Grabbing his hand, I started to analyze the damage.

I'd healed him frequently in the previous weeks, enough to know that he was remarkably alert in a body that refused to cooperate or carry out the tasks he wanted it to. Not so different from Bonesaw's creations in that respect. I'd healed everything but his brain, had altered his digestive system and linked it to his circadian rhythms so he went to the bathroom on a strict schedule, to reduce the need for diapers. Other tune-ups I'd given him had been aimed at making him more comfortable, reducing stiffness and aches and pains. It was the least I could do.

Now I had to focus on his brain. The needles had drawn ragged cuts through the arachnid layer, had injected droplets of acid into the intersection of the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe. More damage, in addition to what Leviathan had inflicted with the head wound, and it was swiftly spreading.

Everything else in the world seemed to drop away. I pressed my forehead to his. Everything biological was shaped in some way by what it had grown from and what had come before. Rebuilding the damaged parts was a matter of tracing everything backwards. Some of the brain was impossible to restore to what it had once been, in the most damaged areas or places where it was the newest growths that were gone, but I could check everything in the surrounding area, use process of elimination and context to figure out what the damaged areas had tied to.

I felt tears in my eyes. I had thought about healing him and then leaving the Dallon household. Actually doing this, fixing him, taking that plunge, I knew I would probably never have found the courage without being pushed into it.

It wasn't that I was afraid to get something wrong. No. Even as complicated as the mind was, I'd always known I could manage it. No, it was what came after that scared me more than anything. I was the opening of a door I'd desperately wanted to keep shut. Worse still everyone was here to witness it. They would probably hate me. I could have healed Mark weeks ago after all, and they were only in this situation because fucking Bonesaw wanted me to be her sister.

I restored his motor skills, penmanship, driving a car, even the little things, the little sequences of movements he used to turn the lock on the bathroom door as he closed it or turn a pencil around in one hand to use the eraser on the end. Everything he'd lost, I returned to him.

He moved fractionally. I opened my eyes, and saw him staring into my eyes. Something about the gaze told me he was better.

"I'm sorry," I murmured. "I'm so sorry."

"Yes!" The monstrosity screamed, right in my face. "I knew you could do it!"

In that instant, everything boiled over. Carol's treatment of me over the years. The years of healing people just to go on and heal the next one, people I'd never really know, people who didn't want to know me, people who thought I was some sort of saint instead of teenager with an obligation. Watching Mark and others suffer while hiding behind the lie that I couldn't heal brains. Loving Vicky and knowing she would never love me back. Alone, always fucking alone!

I'd almost gotten Mark the help he needed. I'd almost kept my secret! And then she ruined everything! First Carol for getting in the way and being unreasonable, then Bonesaw and her fucking delusions! The Dallons and the Pelhams wouldn't understand.

It just wasn't fucking fair! Why could nothing work out the way it was supposed to? Why did everything have to blow up in my face? Why could I not catch one fucking break?!

With an inarticulate scream I slapped a hand to either side of the abominations face.

It's make up was instantly laid bare for me to 'see'. A few quick adjustments removed the things ability to move. I stared into a pair of the things eyes, ignoring the extra's.

"That was one of my rules." My voice came out dangerously soft. No one said a word. "Do not use my power to harm anyone. Do not make any unnecessary changes. Do not use my power to create anything. Do. Not. Mess. With. Brains!" I was shaking the damned things head back and forth.

"It's too much power, too much responsibility." I hissed. "I never wanted to risk the temptation!" I screamed. "I could have made heartbreaker and Nilbog run screaming with my power, but I don't want that! I never wanted that!" I slapped the thing. I made the legs on one side give out and it toppled off the coach. I stood looming over the monstrosity.

"But no. No that's not good enough for anyone. Not for the patients, not for Carol not for anyone!" I kicked the thing in the side making sure to avoid the sharp instruments built into the legs. "Someone always wants more!" Every word was punctuated with another kick. I glared down into the eyes again. "Well fuck you! You sick, twisted, little bitch! Fuck you, fuck Jack slash, fuck your whole God damned group!"

I slapped a hand to the damned things forehead and started a chain reaction. Everyone watched as the things skin rippled and bubbled before sloughing off. Flesh followed shortly after and finally the outer shell from its back dissolved away. When it was finished there was nothing but metal components and a puddle of biological goo.

Then the giggling started again.

It came in loud and clear from one of the metal components my power couldn't easily destroy. Before she could say any actual words a burst of light destroyed the box.

I kept my eyes fixed on the results of my work. "Fuck." That small broken utterance felt completely insufficient as the emotions drained out of me.

"You could have healed him, at any time." Carol voice was deceptively calm, but there was an icy edge to it that couldn't be missed. What did she want me to do, deny it?

"Carol." Mark said trying to placate her as he sat up on his own for the first time in weeks.

"You could have healed him!" Now it was an accusation. Which still didn't change anything.

"Yes."

"Why?" Vicky's voice cut through Carol's inquisition. Glancing up I made the mistake of looking her in the eye. Confusion, sadness, anger, and… a touch of fear. She was afraid of what I could do.

A very hollow chuckle worked its way out of me before it morphed into a week sob. I was all too aware of all the eyes on me but my emotions refused to be subdued. The walls were coming down and there was nothing likely to stop them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Owl leading Croaker and Raven out of the house. I'd have to thank her if I ever got the chance, this was bad enough without strangers watching.

"Biokinesis." A dark, half sob, half chuckle breaks up my sentence. "My power is biokinesis. Everything from the smallest microbe to the human mind. Everything necessary to bring about the apocalypse in any number of ways. Heartbreaker, Nilbog, Bonesaw. Three of the most terrifying capes on earth. I can do everything they can, and I can do it better. What choice did I have? I had to make rules for myself or I'd have risked going too far."

I would bet anything my broken smile and tearstained face is more unnerving than Bonesaw's monster.

Sarah held her hand in front of her face, but that did nothing to hide the tears. Mark looked completely lost. Carol, Carol was shaking like a wet dog her face cycled through emotions too fast to follow.

Vicky, Vicky looked horrified.

I walked away from them all. I walked out the door half laughing half sobbing all the way. That was it, the secret's out.

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	12. 2-5

AN: Don't own The chronicles of the Black Company, don't own Worm.

This one practically wrote itself. I had something much more dramatic planned when I originally envisioned Amy joining but the scene just didn't seem to cooperate with me. I'm not unhappy with this but given how different it is from my original idea... I'm a bit nervous about this one. Feedback would be appreciated.

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2.5

"Stop following me." I tried to put some fire behind the words but honestly I just sounded tired.

Owl shrugged. "Not going to happen."

For a moment I considered trying to make her leave me alone. I could go about it in a few ways, wouldn't even need to hurt her. But really what was the point? We spent the next few minutes walking in silence.

This portion of the city wasn't too badly off. Power and water were both out and there had been significant flooding from all the heavy rain, but the tidal waves hadn't reached here. Trash was starting to build up in the streets but only just. It would get worse as time passed and more and more people needed to dispose of their garbage and waste.

"At least tell me why you are following me."

Owl Shrugged again. "Lots of reasons."

"Such as?" I growled.

"It's not safe to be alone in the city right now. Possible offensive uses of your power aside you are hardly trained to fight, you are in no way ready for any of the Nine." Owl paused to let that sink in.

I couldn't really argue the point. Crawler can spit acid, and his regeneration is insane. Smart money would be on him. Shatterbird could kill me with shards of glass from almost anywhere in line of sight. Jack like Shatterbird could attack from range. Bonesaw had her minion creature things. I was pulling a blank on the other members just then but the trend was fairly obvious. Touch range biokinetic with no combat training verses anyone who can attack from range is an almost automatic loss.

"Even if you don't run into one of those, ungeziefer, there are still plenty of normal idiots running around with weapons."

"Unger, ungeiz… What?"

Owl chuckled lightly. "Un-gex-ief-er." She enunciated slowly. "It's German. It means vermin."

"You speak German?"

"German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, sign language, though it is a mishmash of military and civilian, my Chinese is a bit of a mess because it is a mix of several different dialects." She glances at my face before chuckling again. It's an entrancing noise. "One aspect of my power is I remember _everything,_ perfectly. I've picked up at least some of the native language of every country the Company has visited, and a few that we have not. I'm quite the linguist."

"That's impressive." Owl just shrugged playing it down though I notice a slight upward twitch of her lips as well as a bit of crinkling around the corner of her eyes.

"The point is you're not trained for combat and you are severely lacking in any kind of range." She paused. "Really all a good close quarters fighter would need is a pair of gloves and a long sleeve shirt."

I glared at her though I think the effect was a bit ruined by the empty feeling that had settled over me since I walked out of _Carol's_ house. Grunting I turned my eyes back to the road and the task of navigating around the many large puddles.

"Is there a point to you explaining how easily you could kill me?"

Owl hummed thoughtfully. "You are important. You're, special. Not in the way that parents call their children special. No, you are something real and measurable. Panacea, a cure for all that ails you. Letting you get killed because your family are too stupid to care for you… It would be a waste."

"What happened to Croaker and Raven?" I asked changing the subject. I didn't want to talk about my family. Not now, maybe not ever.

"There around, just keeping their distance. I asked them to give us a chance to talk."

"Again, why?" I asked slightly frustrated now.

We walked in silence for almost a minute before she finally answered. "There are a lot of reasons, some I doubt you would believe right now, depending on how things turn out I may not even need to tell you. But mostly I wanted to sound you out."

"Sound me out?"

"You've been slogging through a fairly miserable life for the past few years, that sound accurate?" I gave a slight nod. "Figured as much. You kept going, never gave up, without anyone to support you. I'm not sure if I am strong enough to do that."

I shot her an incredulous look. A warm smile broke across her face. "It's true, honest. Fighting with the Company has seen me dragged through more crazy situations than I care to think about, but I always had support. I was never alone. The Black Company… it's family. We look out for each other, you know? We're there for our brothers and sisters." Her voice is filled with warmth and pride.

I can't help but feel a bit of longing for what she describes. To never be alone. To always have people ready to support me. To know, to actually know that there are people who would give their all for me. Vicky and I… We came close to that, but she never backed me against Carol.

"You have a certain kind of strength to only snap now, with everything that has happened lately. You also have a skill that is valuable beyond belief. The company could use you, and we'd be offering you what you need in return."

I didn't respond or react to the offer. I just kept walking. Utterly exhausted mentally and physically but I kept moving one foot following the other. Moving forward was all I had left.

She wasn't wrong. I wanted, _needed,_ that kind of support in my life. After everything that had just happened… I'd never get it from my _family_. What other options did I have?

I could join the Protectorate. I'd spend the rest of my life doing public relations appearances and healing. Now that New Wave and the Nine know my full powers the PRT and Protectorate would surely find out soon. They might choose to monitor me constantly to be sure I never crossed the line. If I ever did cross a line, I had no illusions that I would quickly find myself birdcage bound.

I had a standing offer from the Slaughterhouse Nine. Even as tired as I felt that thought drew an amused snort from me.

I could try going solo but that was an invitation to be kidnapped and exploited by any villain that could get their hooks into me. I would not even last a month.

The Black Company though… A group of people who would value my abilities, value me. Support from a group of people who would fight and kill for me, so long as I was willing to do the same for them. Could I do that?

The still fresh memory of watching Bonesaw's abomination liquefy seemed to answer that question. But then again maybe it did not. That _thing_ certainly did not have any sort of consciousness. Calling it a biological robot would be more accurate. Though I felt rather grimly certain I would have done the same to its creator given the opportunity.

I'd be as safe as a cape can ever be in when involved in combat, and I'd likely be kept well away from the fighting do to my value as a healer. I'd have support, a family of sorts if Owl could be believed.

I wanted that. I wasn't foolish enough to think it would be perfect though. I knew down to my very bones that it would be hard, that it would change me, that I might even hate it. It wasn't love in the traditional family sense, or in the sense of lovers. It was like the military, brothers and sisters in arms, bonds many claimed to be closer than blood. Once I made that choice there was no going back.

With a pained wince the thought of Vicky flashed through my mind. I might miss Aunt Sarah, Crystal and Eric, but that would only be a slight ache. Vicky on the other hand. She might not have ever backed me against Carol, but she had cared more than anyone else, and I loved her.

Love she would never return the way I wanted. Love she _couldn't_ return the way I wanted. Oh how that thought stung. An old familiar pain, it had been a constant companion recently.

There again was another way joining the Company could help me. A fresh start, away from it all. It would take time to get over Vicky, but maybe getting away from her was the only way to really let her go. The Protectorate could offer me the same chance but again I'd be made into some sort of public relations icon. All the joys of living my life under a magnifying glass for the world to observe.

I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before. Yet I couldn't see it ever happening. More importantly it would still leave me in the same situation in a few years. Live my life hiding from villains behind the rest of New Wave or join the Protectorate, or perhaps the Black Company. Still I had a feeling they Company would teach me enough that I wouldn't need to hide behind them for long. No, they would have me standing _with_ them as quickly as they could. And wasn't that a better, more respectable, place to be anyway?

"Do you ever regret joining?"

Owl gave me a warm smile and chuckled softly. "Raven found me right after my trigger event. My parents had been killed. All the adults from the village had been killed. I and the other children were being used to sweep for mines." She shuddered slightly at the memory.

I stood stunned. She was voluntarily telling me about her trigger event. That was just not done! No one wanted to relive them.

"I was ready to try shooting my way out of the mess. Then the Company swooped in and killed my captors, they took us away. They realized I was a cape almost immediately… Do you know what happens to capes, particularly young ones, in nations at war?" I shook my head no. "They get conscripted."

"You mean…"

"Yes. Child soldiers with great power, already traumatized and malleable, ready to be manipulated." Owl said darkly. "None of them wanted that to happen to me. I've been told they kicked around the idea of sending me here, to the states. But Raven had heard about the Ward program. He and the rest were convinced it was just a different kind of child soldier, a kinder manipulation." Owl shrugged. "From what I've seen they weren't exactly wrong. So Raven kept me, raised me. I grew up a part of the Company, they became family. When the Captain could not put things off any longer he offered me the choice to join The Company, or go my own way. I chose to join. I've never once regretted that choice."

We walked on in silence.

"Why Owl?" I finally asked. The woman walking beside me burst into laughter.

"All the things you could ask about, and you ask me about my name?" Her eyes did the crinkling thing again and a pretty smile spread across her face. "I don't need to sleep, not since my trigger event. Now I only sleep a few times a year if that. I'm up all night and I used to follow Raven around everywhere. Owls are nocturnal birds. The name stuck."

"What do you think they would call me?" I asked hinting at a decision half made already.

Owl's smile grew even wider as she beamed at me. We walked a bit further while she pondered my question.

"Bones." She finally answered. A raised an eyebrow at the response. "It's a reference to an old tv show. It's also an abbreviation of sawbones. An old slang term from when Doctors were more likely to just cut off whatever was bleeding."

"It's a better fit for your group than Panacea." I chuckled darkly.

"True. Does this mean you'll join?"

"I'm not exactly spoiled for good options am I?"

"Most people who join aren't. More often than not people who join have nowhere else to go. You could join the Protectorate."

"Only if I want to live my life under a magnifying glass while they wait for me to slip up and force me to be their PR star." Owl's lip twitched upwards.

"True. Does that mean you'll join? We really could use a few more girls, even with our two new recruits."

The question hung in the air. I must have gone over all the reasons not to stay at least three times today already, and they came easy enough as I reexamined each in turn.

If I remained, assuming I survived the Nine, I was only looking forward to a boring and bleak future. If I went at least I'd be seeing new places and people, and with their help I'd be more likely to survive to see that future.

If I stayed I'd be alone, either mostly or completely depending on how Vicky handled everything. If I went I'd have a family. Not the kind of family I had always wanted, but a family none the less.

If I stayed I'd have to watch Vicky fall in love with some boy and leave me behind. If I left… Well I'd still be saying goodbye but it wouldn't be long and drawn out.

It would mean no more Carol, less hospital visits. It would probably mean I'd see actual fighting more often instead of only ever seeing the aftermath. The first had obvious appeal, the second… I found the idea of actual fighting strangely exciting.

Realistically I didn't have all that much to lose, did I?

The decision was already made It just hung at the tip of my tongue waiting to be spoken. Once the words left my mouth there would be no going back. I felt like I was standing at the edge of a precipice ready to jump.

With an explosive sigh I stopped walking and turned to face Owl. "The name is Bones. Nice to meet you, sister."

* * *

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	13. 2-6

AN: You are all amazing do you know that? :) thanks to all of your interest Company Girl has over 200 favorites! I know it's not all that impressive compared to some of the stories in the major fandoms but for a slow to update fusion of two small fandoms I'm immensely proud of how this story is doing. So thank you all for your interest!

One small note, a lot of people seem excited for an epic beat down powered by the unholy tag team of Skitter and Panacea. That will not be happening. Or rather it will not be happening yet and not to the ridiculously OP degree that it has reached in other fics.

There are reasons for this! The most obvious being if those two invalidate everyone else by being as OP as possible having them join the black company would be pointless and make the rest of the rather large cast nothing but window dressings. I'm not ok with that.

Oh right, I do not own Worm or the Chronicles of the Black Company. And, yeah, I dedicate this one to my Dad.

* * *

Bones

The interior of the Skywhale reminded me of submarines I had seen in movies. It consisted of low ceilings and thin walls. the piping and wiring visibly ran up and down the halls. The main difference was that the hallways were wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder.

I trailed behind Owl trying to take it all in though I was sure I was missing things. It's only noon and I already feel exhausted.

I am officially a member of the Black Company. Right after landing The group had taken me to the Captain to be sworn in and to sign my contract.

Seven years. For the next seven years I fought and healed at the discretion of the Black Company. When that time ended I would have the option to renew my contract or resign. Though from what I had seen and heard a lot of people who joined never really managed to break away.

None of it seemed real. Too much had happened too quickly for my mind to make sense of any of it. Still I felt hopeful. This would be a clean slate. New people, new places, a family of sorts.

"Here, this is it." Owl said. I took a moment to observe the door she had gestured too. It was no different than any other. The only distinguishing feature was the sign proclaiming it to be the women's barracks. "We don't always get separate sleeping space when we deploy somewhere, but here on the ship we get some privacy from the men."

She pushed open the door. The room had a distinctly military feel to it. Several sets of bunk beds and foot lockers, all bolted to the floor, filled the majority of the room. A few posters adorned small spots on the walls but beyond that the room was almost completely lacking in character. Four women are spread around the room two older in their thirties at a guess. The other two are younger about my own age.

"-best power ever! Do you understand? You have the single greatest power in the history of the world! Your power makes this almost worth it!" A blonde haired girl about my age gushed as she hugged an older brunet who had a bemused look on her face.

The blonde stepped back and the older woman began to make signs with her hands. For a moment the blond stared intently, then she looked stricken for a moment before starting to giggle almost madly.

"I, I don't know what you're trying to say!" She shouted gleefully. "Not even a whisper of a guess. Oh my God, it's so nice not to have my power chattering away in my ear for once!"

Huh so blondie is a cape. Maybe a tinker, or thinker? But the only cape who fit that description was…

"Damn it Li, Snitch will you calm down?" A tall skinny girl with long curly brown hair grumbled from a nearby bunk. "And stop pissing and moaning about joining already. It got you away from Coil, and you're too valuable to just throw into a big fight anyway. Really this is a pretty good deal for you."

Snitch responded maturely by sticking out her tongue.

A blonde and a brunette, at least one of whom is a cape with a connection to a known villain. And with a name like Snitch? No it couldn't be, anyone but these two, tell me it's not them!

"Shut up _Widow._ " The other girl glared slightly at the name. "I did what I had too, but joining a group that likes to square off against major threats was _not_ on my to do list."

Widow? Oh god damned it that settled it.

"Fucking hell. _Tell me_ you two aren't who I think you are?" I groaned.

The rest of the rooms occupants turned to look at me.

Snitch blinked for a moment before the lightbulb went off and the confused look slipped off her face to be replaced with a grimace. "Amy Dallon… ummm, hi?"

I do not have the energy to deal with this shit right now.

{}{}{}{}

Widow

I'm too tired for this shit.

I groaned and planted my face into the thin mattress of my bunk. I could easily think of several people from the city I would be less thrilled to share a room with; Sophia, Lung, Bakuda.

Still, putting aside the list of murderous psychos that I had pissed off in my short career as a villain Amy Dallon was in a close tie for first place with Armsmaster for worst possible long term roommate. After all this was the girl I had held hostage and who had threatened me with all kinds of horrible, incurable, body issues while I lay defenseless and injured after the fight against Leviathan.

She was at least partly responsible for my falling out with my team, with my Da… with _Danny_. Fuck, why did this have to get more complicated! I was supposed to be leaving my past behind me! This was supposed to be a fresh start! With a deep breath I let that idea settle into my head.

What was she even doing here? She has a family, presumably friends. While not the most famous or talked about cape in the city she was probably the most universally loved. What could possibly push her to join?

This is my fresh start.

It might be hers too… What she would need a fresh start from was anyone's guess though. Well I suppose Lisa would figure it out once her powers came back but using her to pry did not hold any appeal to me. I wouldn't want anyone going to her for information about me if the positions were reversed after all.

Well, if I was going to make a fresh start of this I might as well make it complete. After all, now we are part of the same group. Not trusting each other might just get one or both of us killed.

Rolling off of my bunk I slapped Li- _Snitch,_ on the arm. Before turning to face the girl who used to be Amy.

"My name is Widow." I waved vaguely at a Snitch. "This is Snitch. I joined yesterday, and Snitch the day before that. What's your name, sister?" I stumbled a bit over calling her sister but I kept my voice neutral. With any luck she would take the hint.

"Fucking hell. Tattletale and Skitter, right? What the hell are you two doing here?" Amy glared at me.

I sighed a little bit. Of course she wouldn't get the hint. With a glance around the room I realized that the older woman all watched the situation with their faces careful kept neutral. Snitch was being unusually unhelpful and looking between Amy and I nervously. Maybe I just needed to be blunter.

"Skitter died." I bit out. "She was betrayed by her team, and her family. She would not, could not, become a hero because the psycho who caused her trigger turned out to be a Ward." I glared at Amy who's eyes widened at my declaration, even as I drew some insects towards me and caused them to buzz a bit. "So Skitter died. My name is Widow. Now. What is your name, _sister?_ "

Amy's muscles seemed to slowly relax. Her face went from hostile to confused.

"But you're-"

"Let's try this another way." I sighed. "Do you want to tell us what drove Amy Dallon, beloved healer, to abandon her family for the Black Company?" I let the question hang in the air for a moment. "Or do you want to tell me your name, sister?"

"A clean slate?" She asked, sounding a bit hopeful and more than a little suspicious.

"A fresh start." I confirmed.

Finally, the idea seemed to click in her head.

"Right, my name's Bones. I just got sworn in." She hesitated for a moment seemingly debating whether or not to say more. Straightening slightly, she looked me in the eye. "We are going to need to talk sometime though."

Taking a deep breath, I nodded. "We do, and we will. But not now, not yet." I smiled tentatively. "Welcome to the Black Company. I'd get settled now. Candy said he would be running us through some basics as soon as he could tear us away from the officers. He hasn't shown up yet, but I wouldn't bet on that lasting."

"Away from the officers? Bones asked.

I gave a slight nod as I hauled myself back onto my bunk. "Yeah, the Captain and a few others have been grilling Snitch for info on the local cape scene. Lady," I waved towards the woman in question who had gone back to examining a bit of spider silk and chitin now that things seemed to be settling down. "Has been grilling me about using my power to make better gear for the Company."

Owl who had kept silent throughout gave me a small approving smile. Rose nodded appreciatively with a slight grin on her lips. Lady stayed focused on the material in hand but I could swear I saw her lips twitch upwards for a moment.

Bones nodded slowly and followed Owl to an adjacent bunk. I had no doubt we would have a long very personal conversation someday. Just not today. Everything was still too fresh, and Bones seemed no more eager to talk about what had happened with a stranger than I was.

It wasn't perfect, but it was the best result I'd gotten out of an argument in at least a week. I would take whatever small victory I could get.

I spared a glance at Snitch who smiled sheepishly. Normally she would have been right in the middle of that.

Apparently she picked up on my train of thought. "I ugh, may be a bit too reliant on my power for talking my way out of moments like that." She admitted.

That drew a little snort from me. "Well this is probably going to be good for you then don't you think?" I teased.

She just gave a little huff and moved away to look through a small selection of paperbacks that sat in a chest off to one side of the room.

With a sigh I rolled face down into the bunk. I had not gotten a full night's sleep, and between an Endbringer fight and all the shit that followed it I was going to eke out every moment of rest I could.

I had a terrible feeling I might need it.

{}{}{}{}

Bones

I pulled a bit nervously at my new uniform which is a bit big. Not really surprising given that I doubt they have a lot of seventeen-year-old girls joining. The black and grey military fatigues and boots just felt strange and unfamiliar. The weight of the bullet 'resistant' vest, Candy had stressed that nothing is ever really bulletproof, pressed down on my shoulders. It made me feel slow and clumsy.

Knee and elbow pads rested next to me on a table along with a backpack and a gun holster with extra pouches for ammo, a knife and a canteen. I had been told in no uncertain terms I would not be carrying a gun until I had passed a safety course and proved I could actually hit what I aimed at.

"Alright, helmet next." Candy said passing me the item in question.

Dubiously I placed the helmet on my head and following instructions activated the full face mask like I had seen Owl, Croaker, and Raven do earlier.

As the mask wrapped around my face I couldn't help but gasp. I knew from experience that anyone looking at my face would see a skull mask but from within my vision was completely unimpaired not even any discoloration.

"Nice right?" Candy commented with a slight grin. "Supposedly Lady played around with heads up displays way back when but was never happy with sticking one inside of a helmet. They limit the field of vision and it's like sitting too close to a tv after a while. Or at least that's what she always says when anyone asks. Anyway, she came up with this stuff to replace them. It's clear from the inside, imposing from the outside, and its bullet resistant. Also the helmet as a whole works as a gas mask. Nothing in or out."

"Tinkers are such bullshit." I mumbled without any heat.

Candy's grin grew a bit wider. "There's also the radio built into it here you work it like this…"

Learning the radio took only a few minutes and then Candy grew serious and pulled out a flash drive. "In your pack there should be a small tablet. It's for writing reports and storing any personal files. It is also so you can study this." He said indicating the flash drive.

"What is it?"

"It's a lot of things. It's a primer on outdoor survival for different environments and small unit tactics. It has a copy of 'the Art of War' as well as a personal favorite of mine 'the Book of Five Rings.'

"I've never heard of that one."

Candy nodded agreeably. "It's not as well known, but it might as well be the soldier's bible as far as I'm concerned. Leave 'the Art of War' for the officers, It's dry reading anyway."

I hummed agreeably not really having an opinion one way or another yet.

"Most importantly though is that the flash drive has a copy of the Annals which you will have to hook up to the tablet to be updated regularly. The Annals is three hundred years of our history, our tactics and the names of all the brothers and sisters who came before us."

Candy laid it on the table in front of me and tapped it.

"The Annals are the heart and soul of the Black Company. As long as even one of us and the Annals survive, the Black Company survives. It used to be that we only had the one paper copy of them and there was always a risk of it being destroyed. Now we have multiple hard and electronic copies that are updated regularly so that we never risk them being lost, and everyone goes into every fight carrying their copy."

He stares straight into my eyes. "You go into a fight; you do it carrying the memory of every one of those that came before you. You do it knowing that if the worst should happen those who come after will do the same. No one who fights for the Black Company is forgotten."

I stared at the little thing with no small amount of surprise and reverence.

"Croaker is our current annalist. He writes whatever he feels is worth adding. Sometimes he includes bits of field reports too. Read the Annals, learn about our forbearers, and remember, you are one of us now."

{}{}{}{}

Widow

Owl glared at me as I took a step back from the firing line.

"How did you go from barely hitting the target to an amateur grouping in five minutes with zero prior experience with guns?"

"I started marking the target with some of my bugs?" Owls frown faded away a bit and she arched an eyebrow as if inviting further explanation. "I always know where they are so I just line up my hand with the bug… Though I think I'm still jerking the gun when I fire." I mumbled looking away.

Owl snorted. "Is that all? That's fine then. For a moment I thought you had lied about your powers, maybe had some kind of ability to more quickly pick up new skills. Lying about your powers would have been, _bad_. Using the powers, you have creatively on the other hand… Well that's something to be encouraged as much as possible." Owl said with a bit of an evil grin.

Grinning a bit myself now I nodded my agreement. "Does this mean I'm ok to use a pistol now?" I asked hopefully.

Owl chuckled. "Not even close. It's good that you found a trick to help you shoot, but I'm not going to clear you to carry that outside until you can show me a decent grouping without power assistance. Not to mention I want you to be able to pull that gun apart and put it back together first. For now, let's say you are cleared to carry it because the Nine are in town and active. However, you are not to draw or fire it unless all friendlies are behind you."

That… Yeah I'd probably be better of sticking to what I knew for now if I had to work with those kind of restrictions. Though I did understand where she was coming from.

"I can keep my knife, baton, and pepper spray though, right?"

Owl smiled warmly. "You can. Though expect to be run through some weapons training with myself and a few of the others if you make a habit of carrying those."

"That would actually be really useful. I haven't really had any training in how to use either."

"I'll work with you on that later. For now, clear your bugs from the range and let's try this again."

{}{}{}{}

Almost nine I thought. Rolling onto my back in my bunk.

News of the Slaughterhouse Nine's presence in the city had spread quickly. I'd actually gotten a brief overview of Bonesaw's abomination directly from Owl Who had actually seen the thing. Though the woman was rather tight lipped about any past experiences having to do with the Nine. Or more accurately she had called them a string of what I assumed to be curses in languages I couldn't even begin to identify before telling me in no uncertain terms that when fighting the nine you fought to kill.

It was… not an unexpected message. Joining the Nine came with an automatic kill order. Even the heroes fight to kill against the Nine. Still I'd always had to be careful to hold back before with my power. Being told to go for the kill instead was, a bit hard to swallow.

With a sudden bang the door swung open and Owl marched into the room. "Widow, get into your gear, and wearing the body of your old costume underneath might not be a bad idea. You are coming with me for a parlay with the locals. Rose, the captain wants those tanks you've been working on filled fully. I'm not sure about the details but he seems to think we'll need them." Her no nonsense tone had both of us moving. I wanted to ask questions but kept them to myself.

Snitch on the other hand had no such restraint.

"Tanks? As in plural? But with her power that would be…." She trailed off under the glare from Owl. With a gulp she asked one last question. "Just how serious is this if the Captain wants to use something like that?"

Bones and I both glanced back and forth between the now sprinting form of Rose and the silently scowling Owl. Now I was curious what my friend was piecing together, and just how bad things might be.

"Snitch, you just volunteered for KP duty for the next week. Keep your radio close, the Captain may be calling you." Snitch blanched at the mention of KP.

"Widow, finish up and meet me in the armory. I'll sign out a handgun for you, just don't forget my rules about using it. Bones, you might want to standby in medical with Croaker."

With her peace said Owl turned on her heal marching out of the room. Her power gave voice to her agitation as it began to shift rapidly never actually settling on a form.

For a moment silence reigned supreme before Am- _Bones_ jumped from her bunk and began pulling on her uniform swearing softly the entire time. With a jerk I went back to my own preparations. Once dressed I went chasing after Owl, with Bones following close behind me.

* * *

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	14. 2-7

AN: Don't own anything sadly.

I fucked up the timeline in the last post. Amy joined roughly a week after Taylor… I just dropped the ball on that. I'll get around to doing a complete set of edits at some point. I'm still debating the pros and cons of various gun specs… And am abusing Taylor's ignorance to buy myself some time to work that out.

*Ahem* _**This story is now the most followed and favorited Chronicles of the Black Company fic!**_ Either crossover or not. Granted there are not many to begin with but I'm still freaking proud of that fact! Thank you all for reading, reviewing, etc. you are all freaking awesome.

* * *

Widow

The Lieutenant, stood calm and firm at the front of the 'flying carpet'. The apparent nickname for the Company's dropships. It made sense given whatever Tinker insanity kept us in the air looked like a glowing Persian rug from below.

In addition to the Lieutenant and I the carpet was carrying One-Eye, Raven, and nine other soldiers to whom I had yet to be introduced. Everyone but me had one of Lady's custom assault rifles.

Having not even passed Owl's introductory course on the 9mm unmodified pistol she was using to train me, I could honestly say I only knew that the guns shot bullets, and the tube below the normal barrel was some sort of laser.

Most of the men also carried at least one canister which seemed uncomfortably grenade like.

But what really had me worried was that amongst trained soldiers and a cape with a decade or three of experience, my job, as described by the Lieutenant; "Be intimidating."

Not nearly enough training to justify carrying a gun, a knife and baton, and my bugs. That's what I've got going into a meeting with the nastiest surviving capes in the city… And my job is to be intimidating.

Out of a Company of soldiers and veteran capes they picked a not even sixteen-year-old girl with bugs to be intimidating. My fidgeting was, as far as I am concerned, completely justified. In theory I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to act the way the others were acting, how Brian always stressed we act in order to build up our rep.

I was coming along to be scary… I'm just not sure why I'm the one getting the job.

With a sigh I glanced around. The people I shared the carpet with all seemed to have picked up on the mood the Captain and Lieutenant had been giving off before departure. Everyone seemed serious and focused. Some double checked gear, others stared off into space. All but One-Eye had thrown me at least one speculative look.

The little aging black man with the eyepatch spent the whole trip muttering to either himself or the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant would nod or occasionally ask a question in return.

My radio buzzed slightly before the helmet closed around my face in response.

"How you holding up, Taylor?" Lisa's voice came through with crystal clarity.

I chewed at my lip debating reminding her that was no longer my name but I decided to let it go for now. It was a small comfort, and right now I would take whatever comfort I could find.

"Nervous." I responded quietly.

"You, nervous? Why? You are the girl who took down Lung twice and carved his eyes out. The badass who hacked off Bakuda's toe's, you literally ripped Leviathan a new asshole a few days ago, remember? Because I can promise you all the villains will, probably a few of the heroes too depending on how much they know."

I closed my eyes and thought about that. Why was I nervous? I was new to the cape scene but I had undeniable made waves during my short, now concluded, career as a villain. But this was my new life. I wasn't sure I could stand to fuck it up before it even began.

"Lung, had vulnerabilities. Not a lot of them but they were there. Bakuda was normal once you got past the bombs. Leviathan… That was desperation more than anything." I said dismissing her argument. "Some of these capes won't have weakness I can exploit with my bugs. My biggest worry is Hookwolf, though the twins and a few others are out of my weight class too. Even worse if something goes wrong my power isn't the sort that solves the issue quickly."

I would be better ambushing someone from three blocks away.

She hummed thoughtfully. "True but don't forget you have One-Eye, and a lot of guns and lasers. Most importantly you have your rep backed by the Company's. Forget the how and why, you still did all of that. They will respect that. Besides, I would bet some of the guys have a little insurance from Rose with them too." The last was said practically dripping in smug.

I had to wonder if she was actually hoping we would need Rose to bail us out, or if she knew something I did not.

"...Thanks."

"Just keep your head about you. If I'm stuck with these guys I'm going to need a friendly face around to keep me going."

She tried playing the comment off as a joke but I could hear a bit of the raw vulnerability in her voice. It brought a ghost of a smile to my face.

"I'll be careful, Lisa"

"You'd better be!" She responded sounding much more upbeat. I guess she really was missing her civilian name, and everything it must have stood for.

"I'll be watching from a video feed. I might give you some information but don't bother responding, the Captain wants you mask open for now."

"Got it." I said just before my mask folded back up into the helmet.

I still felt a bit nervous, but Lisa's little call had helped, and knowing she would be with me in spirit helped more. I pasted a determined look on my face and resolved to fake it until I could make it. I'd chosen the Company, and for whatever reason they had chosen me for this job. I would do everything I could to prove it had not been a mistake.

Closing my eyes, I took a moment to consider just what sort of face I should be presenting to the world, just how I should pull off my job to be intimidating.

I had only seen one member of the Company ever interact with heroes or villains, Lady. She had been aloof throughout, only letting the walls down a little too draw me in. She had treated Legend, the leader of the Protectorate and one of the most powerful capes alive, with nothing but contempt or grudging cordiality. Her attitude screamed her superiority. She was Black Company, and she was _untouchable._

 _I_ would have to be untouchable.

The Carpet started its descent and I brought my attention back to my swarm. I had been collecting insects throughout the flight having them trail behind us, and collect ahead. It was one of the largest swarms I had ever amassed. Fliers started to ferry the land bound insects across open water to the meeting point. I tagged everyone with several bugs.

If I was going to do this, I would do it right. No one would make a move without my knowledge. I moved my bugs about the pile of dirt and rock we were using for the meeting making sure to place a few venomous insects near each group.

Having a hostage could come in handy if things went to hell.

Standing I glanced over the four-foot edge of the landing craft getting my first look at the collected capes.

The largest group was made up by the remainder of the Empire. Hookwolf and Purity stood at the forefront but there was obviously excessive space between the two. In addition, many of the other Empire capes seemed to be glancing between, or subtly watching, them.

A split in the ranks perhaps?

Faultline held herself with poise similar to the way Lady carried herself, though more relaxed, disinterested. If I had to guess she was putting up a facade. Her crew might not get involved unless someone paid for their services, but the Nine would not care about her policies. She had to know that.

The Merchants… Did not rate comment or consideration beyond that they seemed to be sulking and sullen. Three crappy capes and a bunch of druggies who didn't even show up to an Endbringer fight in their hometown? Yeah, they were lucky to even know about this meeting.

What remained of the Undersiders stood fidgeting near the island's edge. It made sense. Even with the rule against using powers they were down to only Bitch for actual offensive abilities. With the amount of time it would take her power to affect her dogs, and all but one of her best trained dogs having died, the Undersiders were weaker than ever before.

Part of me wanted to call out to them. I missed them. My first friends in almost two years and I couldn't even speak with them. Bitch would likely try to kill me if I did.

Uber and Leet were nowhere to be seen. Which was not overly surprising. What was surprising was the absence of Coil and the Travelers.

New Wave was in full attendance, well, minus Bones of course. Similar to the E88 the family seemed to have developed a rift. While most of the group stood together Brandish was pointedly ignoring the entire group as a whole. Her husband standing nearby from the looks of things trying, unsuccessfully, to play mediator.

That only left the Protectorate. Useless bastards.

Out front are Assault and Battery looking tense around so many villains. Triumph stands only a step behind the pair, with Vista standing rigidly by his side.

But there was one more person standing not so close to the heroes. I could feel them but I couldn't… The person shifted moving out of the shadow of some rubble and into sight.

"Where are they?" I vaguely registered Lisa's voice filtering through my helmet but my mind was too busy processing Sophia presence here. "Coil's not the type to be late. The Travelers Maybe but not Coil." She muttered. I tuned her out. Right then if Coil was in front of me soaked in gasoline I couldn't even be bothered to light a match.

My fresh start, my clean break from the shithole that is Brockton Bay, is about to be ruined, like everything else in my life, by the psychopath known as Sophia Hess. Rage, despair, frustration, emotions I can't even put a name to all swirl through me like a tide peaking and receding as another emotional wave replaces the last.

With a deep breath I immerse myself into my swarm. Their movements become more frantic as they give voice to my emotions. I let them run wild for a moment then clamp down hard exerting my control on them. I let my emotions continue to bleed into them feeling a veneer of calm spread over me.

This is mine. She won't take this from me. I won't let her. I still have a job to do, this just makes is harder.

Indifference and condescension just are not going to cut it for this. No, no, this situation calls for _contempt_. Sophia is the scum I scrape from the bottom of my shoe, lower than even the Merchants. Whatever she says, whatever she does is irrelevant, because I'm better than her. I always have been, and I always will be.

A sneer spreads across my lips. It feels strange and out of place, but oddly, _right_.

Let her come. Let her spit her insults, take her shots. She hasn't broken me yet and worse than her have tried since. Let her try. I'd crush her under my heel.

With that thought the carpet touched down and I stood back straight steps sure and walked off with the rest. I came to stand two steps behind and two to the left of the Lieutenant, One-Eye standing a few feet to my right, and the rest of the men arranged behind us.

This is where I belong, and I've got an army of nightmare fuel backing me up if anyone wants to argue the point.

I can see Sophia stiffen as she catches sight of me. My sneer takes on a slightly feral edge. All I need is an excuse.

"Hebert! What the fuck is this?!" Sophia sneered at the Lieutenant. "I thought you mercenary bastards are supposed to be fighters, not some spineless cu-"

"Stalker!" Battery cut her off mid rant.

Everyone from our group with the exception of the Lieutenant tensed up at Stalkers accusation, I could feel it through my bugs. I couldn't blame them. Accusing anyone in a group that goes toe to toe with S-class threats of being a coward was a grave insult and the height of stupidity.

Inside my new combat gear, I was shaking. Oh I wasn't afraid, I was pissed. I reached out and sunk those emotions into my swarm as well. I needed to appear perfectly calm. She's beneath me. I'd let the Lieutenant handle it, besides Hebert wasn't my name. Not anymore.

Still Stalkers outburst got the attention of all the gathered groups. Deep breath, but take it nice and slowly, don't let them see me flinch. This isn't school and I'm not defenseless here. I'm not alone here. I have power and leverage and she can't say much of anything without confessing in front of her bosses.

My sneer morphed into a slightly feral grin.

Oh wow. I can work with that.

"Actually, my name is Widow, and I'm sorry but, do I know you?" I asked fighting not to let too much show on my face. Everyone froze, Battery especially seemed shocked. She must have been briefed on my change in alias. But more important was the implication. The more she talked, the more details she gave, the more likely she would be to compromise her own secret identity. Oh, and I suppose the fact that I knew Stalkers name out of costume rather than just her face.

Let's see the bitch try to weasel around that.

"I don't care what you're calling yourself now! You're weak, pathetic! If we're supposed to count on you against the Nine we'd be better off on our own!"

"Stalker, you are so far out of line it's not even funny. Now, shut up!" Battery hissed.

"Widow!" The Lieutenant said loudly, but with an even tone. "This, _hero_ , seems to doubt your combat abilities. Please demonstrate for her why it would be best not to provoke either yourself or the Company."

It took a moment to sink in before I realized what he wanted, but when it did I couldn't stop the vicious grin from spreading across my lips.

"With pleasure, sir." I said before tapping the side of my helmet causing my new combat mask to slide out and cover my face. I called on my swarm grinning behind the mask.

A lot of people seemed shocked as they saw my mask and realized who I am. I knew exactly what they were looking at; a darker version of my original mask but with eight blood red eyes spaced out like a spider's. Most were already making the connection but The Lieutenant had told me to demonstrate my capabilities, so that was precisely what I intended to do.

The swarm of insects I had been collecting flowed between feet, and buzzed passed heads. As the first of the insects began to reach me I had them spiral around me, the fliers forming a living cyclone of chitin around my torso continuing on up past my head and into the air. The ground bound insects formed a swirling carpet around my feet. Several people shouted protests to my use of powers on neutral ground.

I was about to disperse the bugs back into the shadows when an idea came to mind. Something too perfect not to do.

Shifting the fliers up and behind me they took on the visage of a black skull surrounded by a circle. Moths filled the mouth with grey and white teeth. Then I made the swarm laugh, a horrendous high pitched chittering sound, and the lower jaw bounced up and down in time with the chittering cackles.

Out of the mouth of my giggling skull insects flew; a stream of ladybugs and fireflies producing what appeared to be tongues of flame. The stream of red and yellow insects washed over my back and the heroes before me. Amidst the chaos, the shrieks and shouts, I dispersed my swarm back out of sight.

I was showing off and everyone knew it, but that was fine. I had been ordered to make a point, and to be intimidating. I think I succeeded.

For a few precious moments everything fell silent and I felt a thrill go down my spine at the terror my stunt had produced.

"No. Fuck no! You have got to be kidding me!" Shadow Stalker ranted, waving her crossbow in my general direction. In an instant the atmosphere changed. Masks depicting grey skulls snapped down to cover faces and weapons came up all around me as members of the Company trained rifles on the fuming Shadow Stalker.

"Battery, control your subordinate! I won't risk this meeting over some little girl who can't keep her emotions in check. If she can't be trusted to act professionally, and not wave her weapons around like toys, I'll have to ask your group to leave!" The Lieutenant's voice was thick with anger and disgust. "And so help me if she attempts to shoot any of my people with that thing I will gun her down myself!"

"Fuck you and your pathetic group! That bitch knows who I am out of costume!" Shadow Stalker was still pointing those crossbows of hers at me.

"And now you know who she _was_ , not that it matters." Was his calm reply.

"And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean?!" Stalker spat.

"It means, you stupid bitch, I don't have attachments to my civilian identity anymore." I drawled, fighting to stay calm. "That includes promising not to go after any _heroes_ , or villains,that may have fucked me over before I joined the Company." I spat from behind my mask, which did nothing to hide my contempt.

"It means for all I care this city, you, and all of you fucking _heroes_ can burn. We both know what you did to me Stalker, and unfortunately there really isn't anything I can do about it." I drew in a calming breath. "So fuck you, fuck the people covering your ass, and fuck this town. Now stop pointing those toys of yours at me." I snarled.

"Tough talk for a wimp like you. What happened, did daddy find out you were a bug controlling whore and kill himself?! Your team realize what a loser you are and kick you out?!" Battery hissed something at the girl, I didn't really hear or care what she said.

She was grasping at straws looking to get a rise out of me, trying to re-assert dominance or whatever fucked up explanation went on in that head of hers. Well, I wouldn't give her the satisfaction.

I took a moment to breath and bury my emotions in the swarm.

"Left my team before Leviathan attacked. Don't know what happened to Danny. Don't care either. Whatever he does isn't my problem anymore. Now, stop pointing that stupid toy of yours at me and stop delaying this meeting with your whining." My bugs buzzed slightly at the end.

It was a lie. Or a partial lie anyway. Truthfully I hope Danny hadn't killed himself. I hoped he would put this behind him and find a way to not be miserable. But I wasn't going to hold my breath. I remember how he handled Mom's death. This would likely be worse. But I wasn't lying about it not being my problem anymore. This is my life. I won't waste it worrying about a man who stabbed me in the back instead of supporting me.

My proclamation of indifference seemed to hit most of the heroes like a slap in the face as they recoiled slightly, though the villains just gave me appraising looks.

"Widow is correct." The Lieutenant stated dryly. "This distraction has dragged on long enough. We have a great deal to discuss and little time to do it in."

Battery noticing that Shadow Stalker was still pointing her crossbow at me pushed the girl's arms down and gave her a look that promised no end of trouble before turning back to the meeting. Assault gripping the girl's shoulder tightly and not letting go also helped to get the message across.

"Agreed." Hookwolf growled. "Enough of this. Why are we here? And what gives you the right to invite _heroes_ to a meeting on neutral ground."

There were murmurs of agreement from most of the villains.

"I'm also interested in why you are here, Lieutenant." Purity cut in while glaring at Hookwolf. "When your people approached us we were told this would be a meeting with your Captain."

The Lieutenant nodded agreeably. "That was almost a week ago." He shrugged. "We were just planning to let you all know what our agenda was. Unfortunately, recent developments called for a change of plans. No doubt several of you have had visits from the Slaughterhouse Nine."

Murmuring sprung up around the circle. So did a fair amount of cursing.

"Figured as much. While that on its own is bad enough the morons have pissed off what we can only assume is another A or S-class threat while out recruiting."

More shouting from everyone.

I do my best not to move my head and look at the Lieutenant from the corner of my eye to see if he's lying but his mask hides his face.

"Oh shit. He's serious." Lisa's voice crackled over my radio. "What else could possibly count as an S-class in this city? Did the three Blasphemies leave the UK or something?" I ignored her in favor of watching the groups reactions. Though the thought of two S-class threats in the city at the same time was terrifying. Would the Captain just pull us out of the city if the odds are stacked too high against us?

"What exactly are you talking about?" Lady Photon demanded, shouting to be heard over the rest.

"A case-53. Coil had her locked in a massive vault within his base. Crawler broke in and killed most of the people there and left the rest injured before leaving. That reminds me, Coil and the Travelers were all killed."

Lisa started swearing up a storm. "A week! A damn week! If I had waited a fucking week I never would have needed to join! I'm stuck in a seven year fucking contract because I didn't risk waiting a week?!" Reaching up I shut off the radio. I really didn't need her screaming in my ear right now.

Dinah was probably dead.

I'd told the Protectorate, and they had done nothing, again. What a surprise; a government agency not taking action against a bully, a criminal, when someone told them about a crime. At least... at least she wouldn't be his _pet_ any more.

"The case-53 broke out maybe a half hour after Crawler left. She's spent the time since then making warped copies of the few survivors. A pair of capes; a shapeshifter and a teleporter, along with a few soldiers. The copies are, warped, for lack of a better term. Unfortunately, Coil had a lot of weapons lying around. So far the, girl I suppose, has been alternating between crying over dead friends, homicidal rants about killing whoever is responsible and cooing over some of the clones." He shrugged. "The Captain has a plan to deal with the situation."

"What? Just like that you shit stain mercs are gonna fucking take on a couple ah monsters? And we're just supposed to swallow it like a cheap whore?!" Skidmark shouted.

"I was actually under the impression that half your group _are_ cheap whores." The Lieutenant drawled. Several of the men chuckled. "Matter of fact, I think Croaker had to deal with some problems a few of the boys picked up from your girls." That set One-Eye to outright cackling.

Hearing the Lieutenant crack jokes about the Merchants whores after declaring that the Company had a plan to deal with two S-class threats simultaneously was surreal to say the least. Either we really did have this handled or he was the best liar I'd ever met. Both thoughts were impressive, but for completely different reasons. Even if he really did believe we had the situation under control to have the balls to say it to a hostile group of capes, that demanded respect. The fact that several baseline humans with guns were relaxed enough to laugh at the joke only reinforced the image.

Skidmark's angry spluttering was ignored by everyone.

"Honestly I could not care less if any of you actually believe me, so long as you stay out of our way."

"You would turn away help in a fight against the Slaughterhouse Nine and an unidentified case-53 who can clone other capes?" Lady Photon asked.

"We have a past history of other groups fouling our ops. It's simpler for us if you aren't in the way." He shrugged. "Besides which, we have a plan we have been meaning to field test. It wasn't really viable until we figured out and eliminated the Siberian. But now that she's no longer an issue…" He trailed off and shrugged again.

One-Eye chuckled darkly.

"You can't just expect us to trust you with our city." Battery stated firmly.

"The Empire won't just sit back and not defend our turf!" Hookwolf snarled.

"You fuckers 'll stay out of Merchant territory if you know what's good for you!" Skidmark shouted.

Out of everyone present only Faultline's crew seemed fairly accepting of the Lieutenants declaration. But that made sense they only fought for money and you had to be insane to want a fight with the nine.

I shifted a bit nervously from foot to foot. I wasn't opposed to taking the fight to the Nine and whatever fucked up cape Coil had been keeping locked in a vault, but the idea of doing it by ourselves seemed all but suicidal. One hundred fifty soldiers give or take and a handful of capes versus one of the most dangerous groups on the planet and an unknown replicator was daunting odds. Still, no one else seemed nervous about the prospect so I tried to bury my concerns.

"You're all talking as if we are going to give you a choice in the matter."

The Lieutenant made a gesture with his right hand and One-Eye thumbed down the switch of a detonator he pulled from a vest pocket. Instantly plumes of white smoke went up all around the little island. One of the soldiers pulled me down seconds before a burst of blinding light shot a bit above and to the left of where my head had been.

"Stay down until it clears." He hissed. I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak. Inside I was panicking. We had broken the truce. This was bad, this was very, _very,_ bad. I pulled my swarm in and started planting more and more venomous insects on as many capes as I could.

Slowly the sound of coughing subsided and the smoke started to clear revealing all of the present capes in various states of panic.

With an enraged scream Shadow Stalker bolted through the remains of the smoke aiming for me. I could feel the bugs placed on some of the others shifting as they raised their weapons.

I didn't really take the time to consider what I was doing. I pulled out my baton and stepped forward to meet Stalkers headlong charge.

Her fist was pulled back ready to throw a punch, I put my weight behind a one armed swing aimed for her head. To my immense surprise my baton connected and spilled Sophia out onto the ground with a dull crack. The fact that she had not phased through the blow hinted that whatever Rose's power produced had been mixed into the smoke. I silently thanked Lady's work for the air filter built into my mask.

Holly shit it felt good to hit her!

I stepped back so as not to get in the way if our guys needed to open fire. Shadow Stalker groaned lightly and made as if to attack again before the sound of bullets being chambered forced her to reconsider and step back massaging her jaw. Though I'd bet everything I owned she was trying to glare holes in me.

"What did you cocksuckers do!" Skidmark screamed. For once no one tried to ignore or talk over him.

"Simple, we've taken away your powers." Outraged shouts drowned him out from all corners. "Oh for the love of… SHUT UP!" Silence grudgingly fell. "The effects are completely temporary. Normally we wouldn't violate a truce like this, but really it was the only way to keep you all out of our hair. It's also safer than letting you go running around the city only to lose them in a fight or while several stories off of the ground."

"What?" Purity asked in shock and disbelief.

"We're shutting the powers down. As of right now the only capes in this city are ours." As he spoke he pointed up causing everyone present to look up. A dozen or more carpets crossed the skies trailing more of the white smoke. At the rate they were going the city would be covered in minutes.

"Right, then, we've got places to be. Stay out of our way." With that the Lieutenant turned on his heel and headed for the carpet.

I spared a backwards glance at the Undersiders. Brian was impossible to read, Alec seemed frustrated, Rachel looked furious, and… Ok who the fuck was the new girl? With a shake of my head I followed the last of the men up the ramp and retook my previous spot.

As we lifted off the Lieutenant moved to my side. "Good work. Next time leave your radio on though. Someone was supposed to clue you into the plan before we neutralized their powers."

I nodded tightly. "Yes, sir."

With a quick pat on the shoulder the Lieutenant moved back to his previous spot by One-Eye. Closing my eyes, I took another deep breath and focused on building up my swarm. I had a feeling I would need every edge I could get.

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Read and Review and once again thank you all for being awesome and making this the most followed and faved Chronicles of the Black Company fic.


	15. PRT Threat Assesment Report

AN: Don't own worm or Chronicles of the Black Company. This was something I thought I should get done before getting into any serious fight scenes, and would be good to explain a few things that have been going on so far. I'm going to apologize now ate my formatting for this one and I can't seem to fix it. Anyway yeah slight info dump time.

Oh and hey Review Responses!

Mingyu: yep that was Imp.

Teucrian: The fire breathing skull is the companies emblem.

Guest: *bangs head on desk* I officially want to kick your ass. You read three chapters and said so long? guys with guns can't possibly take down a cape? are you fucking kidding me? The PRT catch capes, and they handicap themselves with dumb ass nonlethal measures. A bullet through the brain can kill so damn many of the canon capes that it is not even funny. The only reason it doesn't are A) author fiat, normal's just fucking run from capes. B) normal's limiting themselves to primarily nonlethal measures for fear of eliciting a more violent response. It's bullshit. A sneak attack and a large caliber bullet can solve a lot of things. All of this is exasperated by the fact that you seem to think the Company are not taking losses when I haven't even written a single combat scene yet. Seriously the turnover rate is going to be so high up their but nooooo you read three chapters and just wrote the whole thing off. *Sighs* the worst part is you are a guest which means I'm really just venting to all the nice people. Sorry nice people!

Redripper666: I get it man but you have to understand that Dinah just makes things complicated. Precogs on her level are just... they run roughshod over the plot, whatever she says is best is what happens because precog. She's a plot device that I wanted out of the equation, and needed removed. I don't do it to be cheep I just needed her gone for what she represents.

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Threat Assessment Report: The Black Company

The Black Company are collectively considered an A-class threat. The groups exact threat level is somewhat variable based on the number of unpowered combatants they can field at any given time. At their peak in the war against the Dominator the Company numbered close to two thousand unpowered soldiers armed with state of the art rifles equipped with tinker tech lasers. At that time they were considered an S-class threat. Due to consistently high casualty rates the Company's number have never risen much higher than two hundred members since the end of the war with the Dominator. Should their numbers ever rise past one thousand their threat level will be raised to S-class. Should the Company ever gain enough or powerful enough capes that threat level will be raised to S-class.

The Black Company is an independent mercenary group with a bounty hunter contract valid in the United States and many other UN nations. The Black Company are not to be provoked or attacked. Should the Black Company violate their contract the incident and any evidence are to be immediately passed up the chain of command and will be addressed by Chief director Costa Brown or the regional PRT director. They are not to be engaged unless they initiate an attack on Protectorate capes, PRT, Police, or civilians.

Capes:

Lady:

Name: Dotea Senjack

D.O.B.: Records lost in national revolution.

Gender: Female

Description: 5'7", Caucasian, shoulder length straight black hair. Apparent age is early thirties.

Power: Tinker 5. Unlike many tinkers Lady's tech can mostly be assembled by skilled normal workers, only certain components such as power cores or anti grav generators require her personal attention to build or maintain. On average her tech is only a few decades ahead of the norm with the obvious exception of the key components. Her most common design are her laser rifle attachments. Said attachments are disposable by design. Each firing a certain number of shots before becoming useless.

Rose: formerly the White Rose, revolutionary leader

Name: Tonie Fisk

D.O.B.: No known record of birth

Gender: Female

Description: 5'5", Caucasian, shoulder length curly blond hair. Apparent age is mid to late twenties.

Power: Trump 6: a power nullifier. Her range has been reported to vary from one to three hundred feet. Earliest indication that a person has entered her range is the smell of roses which accompanies her power. Think tank believes this is because her power produces particles which are absorbed into the bloodstream then make their way to and block the Corona Pollentia, effects have been known to last as long as three hours. Method of dispersal is suspected to be minor control over air.

Croaker:

Name: Unknown

D.O.B. Unknown

Gender: Male

Description: 5'9" caucasian, short brown hair, apparent age is mid thirties.

Power: Thinker 2, Shaker 3: can asses the physical well being of anyone within his range and can over a period of time heal their injuries, this effect includes himself. By combining his power with his surgical skills Croaker can greatly reduce recovery time for the Company's injured.

Silent:

Name: Unknown

D.O.B. Unknown

Gender: Male

Description: 5'10", caucasian, short black hair apparent age late twenties or early thirties.

Power: Stranger 4, Striker 6: as his name implies Silent is completely silent. He and anything or anyone he is in direct contact with are incapable of making any noise. This has been demonstrated most effectively by his preference for guns loaded with subsonic rounds. In addition Silent can knock targets unconscious with a touch. This longest recorded instance of the effect lasted for roughly six hours.

One-Eye:

Name: Unknown

D.O.B.: Unknown

Gender: Male

Description: 5'4" black, black hair, missing left eye, apparent age early forties.

Power: Master 5, thinker 3: creates one dark or shadowy projection at a time. Projections can physically interact with people and objects. One-Eye can see through his projections. Projections have an unknown upper mass limit and large but Unknown range.

Goblin:

Name: Unknown

D.O.B.: Unknown

Gender: Male

Description: 5'2" caucasian, brown hair, apparent age early forties.

Power: Master 5, thinker 3: Goblin can make a number of black or shadowy projections. Projections can physically interact with people and objects. Goblin can hear through his projections. There is an unknown upper limit on the total mass of his projections. The range of his projections is Unknown.

Owl:

Name: Unknown

D.O.B.: Unknown

Gender: Female

Description: 5' 6" Brown or tanned skin. Shoulder length straight brown hair apparent age early thirties.

Power: Blaster 7: power allows her to form weapons from nothing. While her standard choices are often guns of some kind the true danger from her power are the weapons she rarely manifests. AA guns and cannons with mobility only limited by her own ability to move. Think Tank are confident she could manifest a Davy Crockett making her a nuclear threat. Should Owl every display signs of mental instability Threat rating of the Company is to be raised to S-class.

Widow: formerly Skitter of the Undersiders

Name: Taylor Hebert

D.O.B.: June 19th 1996

Gender: Female

Description: 5'10" caucasian, thin, long curly brown hair, age fifteen.

Power: Master 5, Thinker 1: Controls and is aware of all insect within her range. Range is approximated to be roughly three blocks. Common tactics are to swarm enemies with bugs and distract by directing them towards mouths, noses, ears, and eyes.

Bones: formerly Panacea of New Wave

Name: Amy Dallon

D.O.B. January 2 1994

Gender: Female

Description: 5'6" caucasian, shoulder length frizzy brown hair, freckles, age 17

Power: Striker 3: Can heal virtually any ailment, limitations include brains and regeneration limited by available biomass. Think Tank suspect she is capable of more than simply healing however no consensus on what or how has ever been reached.

Snitch: formerly Tattletale of the Undersiders

Name: Unknown

D.O.B.: Unknown

Gender: Female

Description: 5'8" caucasian, long blond hair, apparent age late teens.

Power: Thinker 7: Claims to be telepathic, presumed to be a ruse, believed to have a form of hyper intuition.

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Reasoning behind Company inspired capes for those who are interested.

Lady: in canon towards the end she made a shit tone of what could be called laser rifles for the companies foot soldiers. most of the more prominent pieces of tech she creates are based on something from canon. and I needed her to be able to supply an army so I dropped the average tech level in exchange for numbers.

Rose: was actually a power nullifier who's range grew as she aged. This seemed like a good compromise.

Croaker: did not have any kind of magic in canon Black Company. I only made him a cape on a whim, but I stuck to the healer/doctor/surgeon them.

Silent: In canon he both took a vow of silence and on one occasion made a bubble around himself and Croaker which made it impossible for those outside the bubble to hear him and vice versa. His secondary power to knock out those he touches is based on a favorite spell of Black Company spell casters which puts people to sleep.

One-Eye: canonically more powerful but not as diverse as Goblin. Most of his shown abilities are semi physical illusions which he and Goblin use in their legendary spats. Toward the end of canon he acquires and imp which he uses to acquire information from far away places which inspired the ability to see through his projections.

Goblin: more diverse but not a powerful as One-Eye which inspired the idea for multiple but smaller projections. Towards the end of canon he acquired a shadow... thing. which he used to battle with One-Eye and to acquire Intel. This inspired the fact that both his and One-Eyes projections are shadowy as well as his ability to hear through his projections.

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AN: Read Review and please be patient while I work out the fight scenes. I don't have a lot of practice writing them so they may take awhile.


	16. 2-8

AN: I'm back! At long last I've started to get my shit in order. Quick recap, Noelle is loose in the remains of Coil's base and is making copies of the few people who survived the Crawler attack. The heroes and villains currently have their powers neutralized. The Nine's roster at the moment: Jack Slash, Shatterbird, Bonesaw, Burnscar, Crawler, Mannequin. For the sake of my sanity Hatchet Face was killed in such a way that Bonesaw could not reanimate him and Cherish did not join the nine. This was enough of a headache without a reanimated corpse and an empathic emotion manipulator on that level added to the equation. The Siberian was killed near the beginning of the fic.

Thanks go out to Rajvic_wolfboy for both betaing this and for supplying me with a suitable frankengun… er that is, a lesser known gun that combines some aesthetics and performance qualities from other firearms. Link: . ?fuseaction= &category_ID=558

I do not own Worm or the Chronicles of the Black Company.

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Company Girl 2.8

Owl

Thirty men and two capes seem like crap odds to be taking against an A, borderline S, class threat. But it was all hands-on deck to deal with the nine already and this little speed bump needed to be dealt with before it got out of control. Besides, Rose could likely handle this one on her own if not for the clones. The rest of us were just here for target practice and backup.

I double checked my Sig P226. The .40 caliber handgun is the go to side arm for the Company and a personal favorite of mine. The large caliber round had excellent stopping power. Satisfied, I slid it back in place on my right thigh, before examining the edge on my combat knife. The knife is a simple ka-bar design, single edge, slight curve near the point, ergonomic grip, and a small guard at the base of the blade. Simplicity itself, but highly effective. Finding no nicks, the blade went back to its normal place on my left hip.

The green and black glow of my power danced from my back around my left side to reform in my hands. The Company standard LAR-47 assault rifle; rugged, accurate at seven hundred fifty meters, and used 7.62 x 39 ammo. I left Lady's laser attachment clipped to my vest. I liked the laser well enough, but if I needed to change weapons with my power it would be left behind, and I didn't need to deal with tripping over it in the middle of a fight. Without a better idea of what to expect I wasn't about to risk compromising my powers flexibility. The extra firepower just wasn't worth it when I could simply make a grenade launcher instead.

Glancing around the Carpet I took in the others going through their own little rituals.

I hated this. Not that we were walking into a fight with minimal intelligence, well, no more than I usually hated that. It happens sometimes. You just had to stay on your toes and make the best of it. Having only thirty men against a cape who cloned people and was herself, in the words of One-Eye, 'the bastard love child of a bull elephant and a Lovecraftian horror' was frustrating and worrying, but we could handle it. We had handled worse with less considering Rose and I were both here.

No, what bothered me was that we were here at all, and not with the rest of the Company. That we would only have thirty minutes to touchdown, deal with the threat, and regroup with the others before hitting the Nine. If this dragged out they would be going in without us.

We were going to lose people. Even if blanketing the city worked exactly as intended, which it _wouldn't_ , we would still lose people. The Nine were just that good at killing. Being there would mean I could make a difference, not being there meant I couldn't. And good as our plan was it had holes in it. Not the least of which was that we were going to be bluffing our asses off with the locals to keep them from calling in more capes who would only get in our way.

The Protectorate _always_ thought sending in more capes would help, but they were _idiots._ They spent _years,_ sometimes even _decades_ , training _not to kill_. They can't just shut that off at the drop of a hat. They hesitate, pull punches, run in ignoring the plan and they get themselves, and more importantly our people, killed.

So, we needed them to stay out of the way. If they thought capes would just end up powerless they wouldn't send them here at all. Hopefully.

The plan was to bluff. Most of what we would be dropping from the Carpets was plainsmoke. Lady may have found a way to preserve the powder Rose made, but that alone had taken five years. In the three years since Rose had spent at least a little time every day squirreling away the powder. Unfortunately, even with Lady's tech it still had a shelf life, and we had tapped into the reserves more than once for particularly nasty capes, or groups of capes. Lord knows we had been liberal with the stuff when dealing with the Butcher.

Every squad was carrying at least a few smoke grenades filled with the dust Rose created tonight, and that had eaten through the reserve stock, but to add onto that knocking out most of the cities capes at the neutral meeting. We only had enough to hit the area directly around where we _knew_ the Nine were holed up. A block at most. We couldn't afford to waste under normal circumstances, but especially not now.

On top of that there was no way that Bonesaw would neglect to fit the Nine with some kind of breathing filter. Oh, the powder would still work, but not as well, not as quickly. It would have to seep in through the skin, and through the tissue of the mouth and nose. That would still work, but more slowly, and possibly not as completely. It might only weaken powers or neutralize only certain aspects of them instead of shutting them down outright, or it might just take longer to fully affect them. It would be impossible to predict. The Nine were hard enough to predict already, this would only make things worse.

I checked myself over to make sure my gloves and helmet left no exposed skin. It was a must, given how much of Rose's power would likely be thrown around tonight. The fabric of my uniform would still be coated with the stuff though so I'd probably start to feel the effects within a couple of hours depending on how much I got exposed to. It would have to be enough though. If we hadn't won in that amount of time we would be dead or retreating anyway.

The Carpet touched down silently and as one we disembarked, everyone's movements precise and silent. We drilled this until disembarking is as easy as breathing, and it shows.

I fell into formation behind Little Prick, and Chicago. Close enough to the front that I can provide extra firepower immediately if needed, but not taking point. Rarely if ever does the Captain allow a cape to take point. Especially on an op like this where point means becoming the first target. We're not to be risked like that. I hated it, but protocol is protocol, and more than once having the cape hanging back, even just a bit, has made all the difference and gotten a squad out of an ambush or kill zone. I knew that, the men knew that.

It still didn't make me feel like any less of a coward for never taking point.

Little Prick is a big man standing over six foot and built like an old roman statue made from black marble. I've always wondered if the man's name was supposed to be ironic or literal. I'd never asked though. Asking would give the impression I was interested, which would mean dealing with Little Prick's lousy pickup lines, and Raven's mother hening. Besides which I had a suspicion he got the name for his tendency to act like a prick from time to time. His attitude left a lot to be desired some days.

Chicago by contrast is a quiet, pale, five foot six, with serious anger issues. How those two got along as well as they did confused a lot of people. How Chicago got his name confused everyone more seeing as he had a Cajun drawl, and had joined the Company when we had been in Tallahassee. A lot of people had been drunk when that came about, but no one seemed to know who was actually to blame.

The base entrance was disguised as a generic looking warehouse. Though between water damage from the recent attack, and the fact that the loading bay style doors had been ripped out, presumably by Crawler, it looked considerably worse for wear.

Little Prick and Chicago took positions on either side of the opening. On Prick's signal, they leaned around the corner rifles raised. Immediately gunfire broke the silence of the night.

"Clear!" The pair hauled themselves up the slight ledge and took defensive positions as the rest of us followed. Inside were a pair of bodies. Obviously, the clones we had been briefed about considering one was naked and had a decidedly ken doll look to him given what he was missing. The second was missing an arm and wore only a bulletproof vest. Both clones had guns in hand.

Wonderful. The things were scrounging weapons from the best armed group in the city, excluding ourselves.

Prick and Chicago moved quickly and smoothly out of the loading bay towards what had once been a set of double doors before Crawler had invited himself in. Now it was more of a vaguely rectangular hole. It led to a hallway that descended at a slight angle. Everything was lit by the dull red glow of emergency lighting, and the coppery smell of blood mixed with the less powerful smell of the dead's last bowel movements filled the air. Thankfully the smell of rot and decay had yet to take hold.

A burst of poorly aimed gunfire had both men cursing as they dropped to the floor. The rest of us dropped into crouches.

"I'm hit!" Prick called back. "Not bad, just a-son of a bitch!" he cursed as a purple beam of light flashed through the opening only a foot above his head. The smell of ozone briefly assaulted my nose.

I didn't think any of Lady's older model lasers would still be kicking around the black market. Then again there had been most of army's worth of the things. Still, after eight years? Coil must have had really good connections.

Crouched down low, I spared a glance at the men behind me before signaling to Raven who had pulled up beside me. I flashed through a couple of hand signs and the man I considered a second father nodded back. Right now, the name of the game was stalling. We needed them focused on us. Chipping down their numbers wouldn't hurt either.

On a three count, a pair of grenades sailed over Prick and Chicago, clattering to the floor below.

The explosion that followed and the angered bellow of something that didn't sound quite human drew a dark smile across my lips and set a fresh burst of adrenaline through me.

Then things went wrong.

Little Prick's prone form was replaced with a man, a clone. It stood on disproportionate legs; one at least six inches longer than the other and overly muscled. The thing shouted something about not harming 'the mistress' and held its arms out to the side before slightly opening its hands.

The pins popping out of the grenades arced through the air reflecting the dull red of the emergency lights. Time seemed to slow down even as I shouted. "Grenade!"

Then someone blurred past me and tackled the clone back over the ledge. I could see it all in perfect clarity for one short moment. The uniform gave nothing away, it was standard. The corporal stripes narrowed things down a bit, but the true identifier was the knife. A Fairbairn Sykes, with a sheath made to look like an opened bird's beak. The one showy piece of equipment the man owned. I'd know it anywhere. I bought it for him.

"Raven!"

The explosion shook the floor and prompted more screams and roars from a basement.

The fucking _ckots_ would pay for that.

"Rose, get your ass in gear! The _vase_ are picking us off!" I don't bother waiting for an answer that wouldn't be coming from my mute friend.

I needed something big.

My rifle flickered. It only took a second for me to be on my feet with my finger on the trigger. Bolted to the floor in front of me was a fifty-cal. machine gun with an inch and a half of iron plating on either side of the barrel with only a thin vertical strip of empty space for me to see through. And from where I was standing most of the lower floor was a killing field.

The helmet dampens the worst of the sound, but the near manic rhythm of the machine gun fire rocked my arms even with the mount taking the brunt of the recoil. I tracked a line of fire across the clones one after another. Scavenged rifles or not, the things were not trained soldiers and did not respond quickly enough to do more than scuff the armor a few times. They dropped like flies, and then I focused fire on the main target.

One-Eye described her pretty well. Though I might have tacked centaur onto his description, given the way the girl's torso jutted out of the monstrosity. She shrieked and shouted and flailed about, but even blowing her brains out of the back of her head did not seem to do anything permanent to her.

I swapped guns moving forward so some of the boys could join me in a proper firing line. Most of the heavier explosives were out of the question. Maybe something a little less conventional. With a flicker of thought an AK-47 is in my hands. Only the ammo is a little unusual.

The screams the bitch made as the incendiaries ripped into her and kept burning were music to my ears, but she regenerated too fast for it to really matter. Like bee stings against a bear. The other two beside me had given up on conventional ammo and were using their lasers. The red bolts of light did noticeably more damage causing the things flesh to slough off like molten wax, but even burning through half a foot of flesh it didn't add up fast enough to mean anything against something so large with such rapid regeneration.

With a barked order over my shoulder three smoke grenades clattered to the floor below us. For a brief moment before the white smoke became too thick I could see some of the monster's flesh sloughing off. Apparently Rose's power is especially effective.

The things scream is beautiful. My answering grin was perhaps a bit unhinged.

For the next few minutes nothing could be seen, and the only sounds where the beast's bellows and the soggy thumps of chunks of semi hardened flesh falling onto cement.

Then the smoke started to clear.

"Noelle!" The scream was male and full of fear.

I stumbled suddenly and found myself looking up at the still screaming thing. It's body was flaking apart and thrashing violently, but Rose's power was clearly working more slowly than at first as the smoke started to dissipate.

There were several bursts of gunfire from behind me and a few shouts of my name. I ignored all of that to focus on the monster in front of me, who had finally noticed my presence.

Its roar was rage, and hate, and pain.

I widened my stance and braced for the sudden increase in weight as my power shifted. Even prepared I nearly stumbled under the weight that settled across my back. I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

A burst of flame shot out of the nozzle like dragon fire of myth as I took measured steps back. It screamed in agony.

The thing tried to rear back and throw itself away from the fire, but the powder in the smoke grenades had done its job very well on its flank. The rear legs rotted away to almost nothing. It stumbled and tried to drag itself away from me with only it's damaged front legs. I kept up the pressure, sweeping the stream of fire back and forth across its twisted body.

I was not alone either. The bright red streaks of Lady's lasers streamed down on the thing. Even through the helmets filters I could smell the burning flesh like so many pigs barbecuing.

The flame sputtered out after just a few seconds. Part of the reason these weren't used anymore was the fuel restrictions. Luckily those didn't apply to me. My power flickered, and I pulled the trigger again.

For a time, the whole world boiled down to just lasers and flame and screams of pain. Then a small boom from off to my left signaled the arrival of Lady and her squad. Breaching through another entrance on the lower level. The volume of laser fire more than doubled and the air became clouded as Rose flooded the place with her power.

Quickly the things roars got weaker, and the laser fire trickled off. Finally, I was the only one still attacking. I burned the whole corpse to ash and let the tanks run dry a few times before I finally stopped.

The silence that followed the roar of my flamethrower was oppressive. The silence after a battle always was. It was that moment in which the adrenaline started to bleed off and reality started to catch up and you had to ask the question. 'Who hadn't made it?' But I already knew. Raven hadn't made it. Couldn't have made it. No matter how good our body armor might be, two grenades at point blank range was a death sentence. And the bastard had done it to save me.

I shook my head. Later. There would be time later. There were still the Nine to deal with. "Grab ours and put them upstairs in the loading dock. We'll be back for them once we finish this."

A few of the men got to work. Rose walked up and squeezed my shoulder, but I brushed her off. Now wasn't the time. Later. I would deal with it later. Right now, I just wanted, just needed, another target to shoot.


End file.
